C4SS Feed 44 presents “Anarchism Without Hyphens” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Karl Hess, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. But anarchism is not an ideological movement. It is an ideological statement. It says that all people have the capacity for liberty. It says that all anarchists want liberty. And then it 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…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nathan Goodman‘s “‘Jobs’ as a Red Herring: The Dangers of Make-Work Bias” read and edited by Nick Ford. Still, many people measure an economy’s health in terms of employment, a phenomenon economist Bryan Caplan calls “make-work bias, a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of conserving labor.” And there are obvious economic…

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,…

In early August, US president Barack Obama authorized airstrikes targeted at artillery used by the Islamic State extremist group against Kurdish forces defending Irbil, Iraq’s Kurdish regional capital. The Pentagon explained this decision by claiming the artillery was “near US personnel.” Fast forward nearly two weeks and kidnapped American journalist, James Foley, is gruesomely beheaded…

Pope Francis’s remarks on poverty, inequality and capitalism — most recently at his open air mass in Seoul — don’t sit well with many conservatives and right-leaning libertarians. The Pope’s remarks include criticism of growing economic inequality and a call to “hear the voice of the poor.” Among those who take issue with the Pope’s statement is…

State ideologies require an underlying cultural disposition, if they are to stand the test of time. This cultural disposition is inevitably tied to the core concepts of an ideology. Nationalism subordinates the individual’s values to those of their national community, while numerous strands of socialism focus upon the lives and pastimes of the proletariat. Romantic…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Dyer Lum‘s “Why We Do Not Vote” read and edited by Nick Ford. But, it is alleged, that as both sides resort to fraud, the chances are equal. That is, politics is a game of cards, in which only the best trumps win. Like a game also “we the people” are needed…

It is easy to criticise a government. Apologists and supporters defend it by claiming that they are doing the best they can, and they point to small token victories as evidence of progress. “Look at what this government has done for you”, they say, but my response is always, “is that it?” The ease of…

There’s always plenty for libertarians to complain about in our troubled world, but in many respects, things could be much worse. I’m thinking particularly of how the U.S. government punished dissent before, during, and even after America’s participation in World War I. Although it will be a few years before we observe the centenary of…

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…

A Teenager Slain On Saturday, August 9, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was walking with a friend on the 2900 block of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. He was on his way home on the hot, humid afternoon, walking down the middle of the street when the two were approached by Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. Reports of what…

On August 12, Brazil’s largest news program, Jornal Nacional, interviewed presidential candidate Eduardo Campos. Of his 15 minutes replying to questions, he spent at least 10 of them touting the presence of his family in the state apparatus. He filled the remaining time with banalities such as “we can’t give Brazil up.” The following morning, Campos’s private jet crashed…

Immanuel Ness, ed. New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism (Oakland: PM Press, 2014) (Amazon link). In his foreword to the book, Staughton Lynd describes the official model of unionism in the United States, first pioneered by the company unions under the American Plan (especially by the company union…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Advocates of Freed Markets Should Embrace ‘Anti-Capitalism’” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Gary Chartier, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Defenders of freed markets have good reason to identify their position as a species of “anti-capitalism.” To explain why, I distinguish three potential meanings of “capitalism” before suggesting that…

Nearly a century ago, after four bloody years of World War I, British colonialists created the state of Iraq, complete with their hand-picked monarch. Britain and France were authorized — or, more precisely, authorized themselves — to create states in the Arab world, despite the prior British promise of independence in return for the Arabs’…

Well, that didn’t take long. The morning after The New York Times Magazine publishes the Gray Lady’s most charitable and understanding in-depth treatment of libertarianism since the modern movement’s emergence in the 1970s, Paul Krugman had ready his obligatory harrumphing dismissal. Getting into his economic-wonk comfort zone as quickly as possible, Krugman perfunctorily brushes past the entire…

In an article that will no doubt make “progressive” hearts go pitty-pat (“The 1% May Be Richer Than You Think, Research Shows,” Bloomberg, August 7), Jeanna Smialek suggests that top 1%’s wealth is far greater even than official statistics indicate — and that because so much of that wealth is hidden in offshore tax havens government efforts to…

Recently the story went viral of the Pennsylvania State Department of Agriculture threatening a Mechanicsburg seed library on the grounds that it was in violation of regulations intended to thwart the danger of (ahem) “agri-terrorism.” To comply with the regulations, the library would have to confine itself to distributing only store-bought seeds and not distributing…