Progressive and conservative critics of open migration frequently dismiss calls for freedom of movement as rooted in narrowly economic concerns. Proponents of freedom point out that, despite what you might hear on TV, immigration yields widespread benefits for both the societies to which immigrants go and those from which they come. And they emphasize the…

Di William Gillis. Originale pubblicato il 12 giugno 2018 con il titolo The Failure of Soviet Privatization. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. Quando “Il Mercato” è Soltanto il Luogo dove si Riciclano i Soldi Insanguinati dello Statalismo Quando cadde l’Unione Sovietica, tra i programmi di “privatizzazione” c’era la distribuzione delle azioni delle aziende ai loro dipendenti….

When “The Market” Is Just Money Laundering the Bloodsoaked Riches of Statism When the USSR fell one of the “privatization” schemes was to just hand workers stock certificates in the companies they worked at. The problem of course was that the economy was seized up and everyone was starving. So gangsters and the children of…

Zine form can be found here! Markets are not my end goal. My end goal is anarchism which will always look like something just beyond the horizon of my knowledge. Markets unleash the creative complexity that make the dynamic testing of a wide range of liberatory strategies more meaningfully possible. This very same complexity makes…

This essay argues that markets are an ideational construct, constructed through a milieu of ideologies, power structures and authority relations. Rather than modern markets being spontaneously ordered mechanisms that have evolved naturally from the progressions of history, they are in instead constitutions of power and ideas, acting as a semiotic mechanism for underlying socio-economic realities….

Praxeology maintains its importance precisely because it implies fundamental principles as the guiding action in scientifically studying human action and understanding its dynamics and relations. From coming from these principles, human actions can be understood as having particular reasoning’s and laws which inform how further understandings of human action can be qualitatively determined and mapped….

The Lego corporation, popular producer of interlocking miniature toy bricks, has recently been making increased efforts to market its toys to girls. Some of these efforts have met with criticism from feminists, who worry about toys that are stereotypically “girly” in a way that reinforces traditional gender roles. In a recent piece titled “Un-PC Lego…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Derek Wall‘s “Corporate Capitalism, Not Simply a Product of the State” read and edited by Tony Dreher. I think there are number of arguments to suggest that if we replaced corporate control with market competition, we would, in a relatively short time, be back to concentrated markets. I am, incidentally, a…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Will Free Markets Recreate Corporate Capitalism?” read and edited by Tony Dreher. And when I say “free markets,” I am not referring to a society in which the majority of economic functions are organized through money exchange (the “cash nexus”) or business firms. By “free market” I mean only…

Considerato che quel poco di libertà di cui ancora godiamo in occidente deriva in gran parte da istituzioni legali in concorrenza tra loro che operavano entro di giurisdizioni sovrapposte secoli fa, è curioso il fatto che tanti libertari pensino ancora che un tale ordine, caratteristica essenziale dell’anarchismo basato sul libero mercato o sul diritto naturale,…

Considering that what liberty we continue to enjoy in the West is a product in large part of competing legal institutions operating within overlapping jurisdictions hundreds of years ago, it’s curious that so many libertarians still believe such an order — an essential feature of free-market, or natural-law, anarchism — would be inimical to liberty. Why wouldn’t…

Mercato nero e agorismo sono parte integrante di come le persone libere salveranno il mondo dalla perenne oppressione economica e dal disastro ambientale. In cosa consiste l’attività del mercato nero? Cos’è l’agorismo e come fa a sovvertire il potere statale? Come fa l’agorismo a promuovere la sostenibilità ecologica? La risposta migliore viene dall’opera monumentale del…

Un articolo pubblicato il 29 ottobre sul Washington Post prende in esame il piano “rivoluzionario” di Bernie Sander su come cambiare in un solo colpo il sistema bancario e quello postale. L’autore cita il fatto che “dal 1911 al 1967, le poste assunsero anche funzioni bancarie”, permettendo così ai clienti di depositare denaro in un…

So, going through the final rounds of work on Markets Not Capitalism with Gary Chartier and the rest of the Collective has really been reminding me that I’ve accumulated a lot of occasional and fragmentary writing — papers, paragraphs, notes, etc. — that I really ought to have been collecting for this blog and sharing more…

Black markets and agorism are an integral part of the way free people are going to save the world from unrelenting economic oppression and environmental damage. What constitutes black market activity? What is agorism and how does it subvert the state? How does agorism promote ecological sustainability? These questions are best answered by looking at…

An article published on October 29th by the Washington Post discusses Bernie Sanders’s “revolutionary” plan to change the banking system and Postal Service in one fell swoop. The author mentions that “from 1911 until 1967, the Postal Service also served as a bank,” where customers could deposit money into a savings account. Sanders, recognizing that low income…

Playboy’s announcement (“Playboy is Doing What?!?,” Playboy.com, October 13) that it will be ending the nude magazine pictorials that have been its foundation for six decades might seem the result of the instability of free markets.  The Foundation for Economic Education’s Sarah Skwire (“The Creative Destruction of Nudity in Playboy Magazine,” The Freeman, October 14) calls the…

Derek Wall’s Response to Kevin Carson. My background is in ecosocialism. I am not an anarchist; in fact, I am currently International Coordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales. I would see ecosocialism as rooted in Marxist thought. So unsurprisingly I would tend to argue that non-capitalist markets tend to lead to the…

Some anarchists and socialists argue that, even if markets can theoretically be non-capitalist, and non-capitalist market economies can exist, the dynamics of the market will eventually lead to the restoration of capitalism. The argument used by non-market anarchists and socialists is that, in a competitive market — even a competitive market of widespread distribution of…

Robert Reich contends that “Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful” (New York Times, September 20) — and so, to curb its power, big government must become way more powerful. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, like the railroad and oil trusts of the Gilded Age, are to Reich the natural result of market consolidation. Retelling the civics-textbook story of…