Protected firms can get away with abusing workers. By way of Roderick Long I’ve learned that Amazon.com has some pretty rough rules for its employees. (Long draws on the Huffington Post and the Times Online.) According to the Times, employees at the Bedfordshire (UK) warehouse were: Warned that the company refuses to allow sick leave,…

Recensione di: Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press, 2003. È arrivato il momento di eliminare il sistema carcerario in America e nel resto del mondo? L’attivista, studiosa, icona dei diritti civili Angela Davis nel suo libro del 2003 risponde chiaramente Sì. La Davis è meglio conosciuta per il suo impegno a favore dei…

Transgender people and issues are receiving more attention in media and policy spaces, but there seems to be some uncertainty from libertarians on how to go about approaching them in both personal and political contexts. This is odd from a group that boasted acceptance of same-sex unions long before the mainstream left or right and…

Ρу́сский: Рынки, не капитализм — Введение Türkçe: Kapitalizm Değil, Piyasalar – Bir Giriş Indonesia: Pasar Bukan Kapitalisme Español: Mercado, no capitalismo – Introducción Italiano: Mercato, non Capitalismo Português: Mercados não capitalismo — Introdução The individualist anarchist tendency is alive and well. Markets Not Capitalism offers a window onto this tendency’s history and highlights its potential…

Review of Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, Seven Stories Press (2003) Is it time to do away with the American prison system, and prisons worldwide? Civil rights activist, scholar and icon Angela Davis clearly answers Yes in her 2003 book. Davis is best known for her involvement with the civil rights and black power movements…

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 “Platonic Productivity” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Roderick Long, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. “Nothing I’ve said shows that men and women are equally productive; it’s only meant to show that, given prevailing cultural norms and power relations, we might well expect to see a gap between men’s…

…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,…

… 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…

Conservatori e libertari non appartengono alla stessa parrocchia. Anche quando i conservatori usano le stesse espressioni dei libertari, spesso il significato è diverso. Così il loro “libero mercato” diventa una giustificazione dello status quo economico e del predominio aziendale; la loro “uguaglianza davanti alla legge” è riservata solo ai tradizionali gruppi esclusivi e privilegiati (pensiamo…

Steven Fake discusses what Israel could have taught Dixie. Lucy Steigerwald discusses U.S. sensitivity to civilian deaths. David S. D’Amato discusses anarchism and minarchism in American history. Sheldon Richman discusses Clarence Thomas. John Feffer discusses ISIS and the terrible twos. Franklin Lamb discusses Palestine and ISIS. Robert Parry discusses Libya and Hilary Clinton. Chris Toensing…

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…

The problem with responding to Alan Wolfe’s feeble attempt to critique libertarianism is that one might appear to be defending the particular people he targets: namely, Rand Paul and Ayn Rand. (Rand Paul was not named after Ayn Rand. At least Wolfe avoided that error.) I want to defend the libertarian philosophy without defending Rand…

There is no doubt that the last twelve months have been a watershed period concerning the greater visibility of transgender, genderqueer, and other gender‑diverse people in both mainstream and social media. Two examples from recent times most readily spring ready to the mind. The actress Laverne Cox graced the front cover of the iconic Time…

Download a PDF copy of Mikayla Novak’s full C4SS Study: Gender Identity and Libertarianism Abstract People who do not identify with a gender status consistent with conventional fixed, binary gender stereotypes remain the target of a complex array of typically intertwining state policies and civil societal norms which greatly inhibit their liberties. Transgender and other gender-diverse…

In Free Market Fairness [1] John Tomasi lays out a way in which the gap between broadly libertarian (or classical liberal) and high liberal (or liberal egalitarian) political philosophies can be bridged. Since F. A. Hayek’s methodologically individualist rejection of the concept of social justice, and Robert Nozick’s liberty-based rejection of egalitarian distributive justice, there…

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…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Worshipping the Boss” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford. “Judging from what he writes and where he writes it, I reckon Masciotra fancies himself a man of the left. There was a time when “Dump the Bosses Off Your Back” was a popular leftist slogan. But the idea…

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…

The middle of next month will mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. My knowledge of the “great charter” is modest, to be sure, but lately I have been reading about it and its legacy. (See the “Liberty Matters” discussion, in which I have a small editorial role, going on this month at Liberty Fund’s…