Call for Abstracts for the Molinari Society’s next Eastern Symposium, to be held in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting, January 6-9, 2016, in Washington DC. (Note that this meeting is the week after New Year’s, rather than, as in past years, just before New Year’s. This later time is expected to…

According to the received version of “interest group pluralism” in J.K. Galbraith’s book American Capitalism, there’s supposed to be a sort of check-and-balance system (Galbraith called it “countervailing power”) between big business, government regulatory agencies and organized labor. But what usually happens in the real world, when the allegedly “opposing” centers of power are so…

So, libertarians, how many rights do people have? One (say, the right to life, albeit with countless applications)? Three (life, liberty, and property)? Or an unlimited number (the right to do this, that, and the other, ad infinitum)? Because part of any strategy to achieve a fully free society presumably includes persuading nonlibertarians to be…

This election cycle’s crop of uninspiring presidential hopefuls, now including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, must be a relief to those favoring mass disillusionment with electoral politics. No candidate, Rand Paul included, represents a convincing alternative to the status quo. Contrast this with the current president, whose appeals to “hope” and “change” convinced many Americans of…

Murray Bookchin. The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy. Foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York and London: Verso, 2015). This book is a collection of Bookchin’s essays on libertarian municipalism and communalism, extending from the period when he still considered himself an anarchist until his final post-anarchist phase. In…

In an anti-libertarian rant titled “You’re Not the Boss of Me! Why Libertarianism Is a Childish Sham,” David Masciotra charges that libertarianism amounts to the petulant selfishness of a child who resents all restrictions on his or her behavior. Masciotra conveniently focuses on libertarians’ saying “you have no right to impose stuff on us,” while…

I keep resolving not to comment on any more of Alternet‘s by-the-numbers anti-libertarian puff pieces, but a recent one from David Masciotra (“You’re Not the Boss of Me: Why Libertarianism is a Childish Sham,” February 26) is in its own category of wretchedness. Masciotra’s commentary includes two seemingly contradictory lines of argument. In the first,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “A University Built by the Invisible Hand” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford. In the 12th century, Bologna was a center of intellectual and cultural life. Students came to Bologna from all over Europe to study with prominent scholars. These individual professors were not originally organized into a university;…

We must face the fact that criticism of the libertarian philosophy in the mass media will most likely misrepresent its target, making the commentary essentially worthless. That’s painfully clear from what critics publish almost weekly on self-styled left-wing and progressive websites. How refreshing it would be for someone to set forth the strongest case for…

As a libertarian masochist who keeps up with the regular by-the-numbers attacks on libertarianism at Alternet and Salon, I almost dared to hope for something at least marginally better from Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect (“The Libertarian Delusion,” Winter 2015). I was disappointed. “The stubborn appeal of the libertarian idea persists,” Kuttner writes, “despite…

Center for a Stateless Society Senior Fellow and Molinari Institute President Roderick T. Long recently gave a presentation on Left Libertarianism for the Center of Ethics and Public Policy in Duluth, Minnesota. You can follow along with Roderick T. Long and his PowerPoint slides (download): http://praxeology.net/radical-leftist-REV.pptx << Back to the Market Anarchism FAQ page

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “Radicalism as Revolution: A Call for a Fractal Libertarianism” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. Ruper, in all fairness, does say he appreciates libertarians’ intense self-analysis. He seems to just want libertarians to redirect their energies toward spreading broadly libertarian ideas, rather than converting members of the libertarian movement…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Where are the Specifics?” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Karl Hess, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Libertarianism is a people’s movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-associate, and, as…

Objectivist scholar Chris Sciabarra, in his brilliant book Total Freedom, called for a “dialectical libertarianism.” By dialectical analysis, Sciabarra means to “grasp the nature of a part by viewing it systemically — that is, as an extension of the system within which it is embedded.” Individual parts receive their character from the whole of which…

If you’re outside the liberty movement social media universe, you might not have known that The Happening was absolutely happening last weekend. What was The Happening, you ask as I admire your ignorance of the affair? Well, the International Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC) was kicking off with movement darlings Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano….

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Free Market Reforms and the Reduction of Statism” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Kevin Carson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The default tendency in mainstream libertarianism is a high degree of statocracy, to the point not only of (quite properly) emphasizing the necessary role of state coercion in…

Geçen Kasım, Birleşmiş Milletler Yüksek İltica Komisyonu (UNHCR) “devletsizlik sorununu” bitirmek için 10 yıllık programı başlattı. Aralıkta, UNHCR Devletsizlikte Bölgesel Koruma Kıdemli Memuru, Emmanuelle Mitte, gazetecilere (Batı Afrikada ve dünya çapında) programı desteklemeleri için temyiz etti ve basının “savunma ve konu sensitizasyon sorumluluğu” anıldı. Ancak bu kampanya, “Ben Aitim” ismiyle, destekci ve yaraticiların Birleşmiş Milletler, siyasi hükümetler, ve yöneten…

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (a book of great virtues and great flaws, but I’m not going to get into either right now), Thomas Kuhn describes an experiment that I think is of tremendous importance to libertarians, particularly left-libertarians: In a psychological experiment that deserves to be far better known outside the trade, Bruner…

A new pamphlet featuring two classic short essays is now available for download thanks to the efforts of the Tulsa Alliance of the Libertarian Left — [PDF] Anarchism Without Hyphens & The Left/Right Spectrum (by Karl Hess). Please note that the format of the PDF file features a staggered page order layout intended to facilitate printing…

Usually when we see right-wing commentary on the upper-middle-class (“NPR/limousine/Whole Foods liberals,” “boho bougies,” or take your pick of other trendy labels), it’s a fake populist attack on their “cultural elite” tastes like brown mustard or wind-surfing, to divert attention from genuine populist attacks on the super-rich. So I guess it’s a sort of man-bites-dog…