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…

At the height of anti-NSA furor in January 2014, The New Republic (TNR) published a hit piece on Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald that criticized their anti-government beliefs, portraying the leakers as “paranoid libertarians” and traitors to progressive government ideas. Said TNR: By exposing the secrets of the government, they claim to have revealed…

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…

In una intervista a microfoni spenti rilasciata al conduttore di Real time Bill Maher, il divulgatore scientifico e conduttore televisivo Bill Nye ha spiegato come ha cambiato idea sui cibi geneticamente modificati. Nye, che in passato si è occupato dell’impatto ambientale di specie transgeniche, ora dice: “Ho visitato la Monsanto, dove ho trascorso molto tempo…

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…

It is difficult to take a political work seriously with the word “nanny” in the title, but Dean Baker’s 2006 book the “Conservative Nanny State” is a serious book and a decent introduction to some often overlooked market distortions that benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else. It also has the advantage of…

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

In a backstage interview at Real Time with Bill Maher, science educator and entertainer Bill Nye expressed a change of mind on genetically engineered food. Formerly concerned about the environmental impacts of transgenic species Nye now says: “I went to Monsanto and I spent a lot of time with the scientists there, and I have…

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…

The week before last, at the International Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC), Ron Paul once again misgendered and deadnamed whistleblower and hero, to libertarians everywhere, Chelsea Manning in a speech. Though his words otherwise sounded supportive, they indicate someone who at best hasn’t paid attention to any news pertaining to her. More likely, he and…

With all the hub-bub surrounding the International Students for Liberty Conference, Ron Paul, and “second-wave libertarianism,” I am reminded of a passage in Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity about the “sub-man.” This is quite reflective of any of us who deal with ideologies, but those who specifically follow libertarianism and or anarchism may want…

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….