It’s a common observation that polls can produce virtually any response desired, depending on how the questions are worded. Emily Ekins, ostensibly reporting on the political and economic attitudes of millennials (“Are Millennials Far Left on Economics? No,” Reason, August 18), displays almost total conceptual incoherence in framing the results of a Reason-Rupe poll of “millennials” (young Americans age…

Essentially, the tragedy of past revolutions has been that, sooner or later, their doors closed, “at ten in the evening.” The most critical function of modern technology must be to keep the doors of the revolution open forever! –Murray Bookchin Part of the dissolutionary strategy advocated by C4SS is called Open Source Insurgency or embracing institutional,…

A day on which everyone can remember where they were is seldom a good memory. On September 11, 2001 we added another day to that list of days we’d rather forget. I was in an optimistic frame of mind when my radio alarm woke me that morning. My first real print publication, the pamphlet “Iron…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Left-Libertarianism: Its Past, Its Present, Its Prospects” read and edited by Nick Ford. This form of left-libertarianism should not be confused with the position of the same name associated with Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, and Michael Otsuka, combining self-ownership (the libertarian part) with some sort of common ownership of natural…

With the United States on the verge of another war in the Middle East — or is it merely the continuation of a decades-long war? — we libertarians need to reacquaint ourselves with our intellectual heritage of peace, antimilitarism, and anti-imperialism. This rich heritage is too often overlooked and frequently not appreciated at all. That…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Egoism And Anarchy” read and edited by Nick Ford. I’ve long held that Greek philosophy and modern libertarianism are natural allies, tailor-made for each other ‘ not because they are similar but because through their very differences each can supply the deficiencies of the other. This debate in Liberty is…

Like many libertarians, I’ve learned a lot from Murray Rothbard on a wide variety of subjects. Of course, no one gets everything right, especially someone as intellectually ambitious, multidisciplinary, and prolific as Rothbard. Nevertheless, reading the work of the man who left such a mark on the modern libertarian movement is as profitable as it…

A economia política de Benjamin Tucker representa uma condensação de suas maiores influências, sintetizando o trabalho de pensadores radicais como Josiah Warren, William B. Greene, Ezra Heywood e Lysander Spooner para chegar a um anarquismo maduro e completo. De Heywood, Tucker extraiu sua análise dos males da renda (rent), dos juros e dos lucros, “seguindo…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Proletarian Blues” read and edited by Nick Ford. Of course the book has its flaws. One is the author’s attitude toward her “real” working-class colleagues, which sometimes struck me as rather patronising. The other – and this is what invokes the libertarians’ sneers – is her economically clueless, hopelessly statist…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “What Laissez Faire?” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Sheldon Richman, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. What, then, is this system called “capitalism”? It can’t be the free market because we have no free market. Today the hand of government is all over the economy — from money…

The political economy of Benjamin Tucker represents an alloy of its major influences, synthesizing the work of radical thinkers such as Josiah Warren, William B. Greene, Ezra Heywood, and Lysander Spooner to create a mature, comprehensive individualist anarchism. From Heywood came Tucker’s trademark analysis of the wrongs of rent, interest, and profit, “follow[ing] closely the…

The book I will discuss below develops and defends the idea of law without a state. The book’s blurb tells us the following: This book elaborates and defends the idea of law without the state. Animated by a vision of peaceful, voluntary cooperation as a social ideal and building on a careful account of non-aggression,…

Why am I an Anarchist? That is the question which the editor of The Twentieth Century has requested me to answer for his readers. I comply; but, to be frank, I find it a difficult task. If the editor or one of his contributors had only suggested a reason why I should be anything other…

Anarchism and hierarchy have a tricky and messy relationship. Some anarchists proclaim to be against all hierarchy (sometimes even defining anarchism as such) and others proclaim they are simply against the state and don’t care about hierarchy itself. I believe individualist anarchism, rightly understood falls somewhere in between these extremes. Individualist anarchism, in short, is…

People are drawn to a commotion. In the marketplace of ideas, winners are often simply the loudest and as anarchists we hold ideas inherently more combative and attention grabbing than those regularly seen on a college campus. This is precisely what makes the campus perfect for radical activism, and was the philosophy which guided the…

The protests, police violence, and repression in Ferguson have sparked nationwide conversations about police militarization and misconduct. There’s some incredibly promising potential here, as more and more people become aware of the brutality of the modern criminal justice system. However, there are also some potential pitfalls that deserve cautious examination. First, the good. Popular commentators…

The term “market anarchism” may give some people the mistaken impression that market anarchists envision a society organized primarily around the cash nexus. In part this is because one definition of the term “market” itself equates to the market as an institution: The sphere of exchange. It may also reflect the fact that many anarcho-capitalists,…

Pepe Escobar discusses why Obama is bombing ISIS. Alex Kane discusses 11 facts about police militarization. Philip Giraldi discusses the GOP. John Maxwell Hamilton discusses how WW1 led to modern propaganda and surveillance. Charles Davis discusses how America helped make the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria. Joshua Cook discusses blowback in Iraq. Ted Snider…

The Foundation for Economic Education has an enviable history. For over half a century, it has sought to share the conviction that society can and should be organized on the basis of peaceful, voluntary cooperation. It has treated the key terms in its name, economic and education, with appropriate breadth — focusing not only on…

In a recent piece in the New York Times, Paul Krugman arraigns libertarians for “living in a fantasy world,” telling us that there is usually a “very good reason” for bureaucrats to substitute their judgment for our own. When one asserts that he is opposed to an untrammeled free market, all he is really saying…