C4SS Media presents Sheldon Richman‘s “Libertarian Class Analysis” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Say the words “class analysis” or “class conflict” and most people will think of Karl Marx. The idea that there are irreconcilable classes, their conflict inherent in the nature of things, is one of the signatures of Marxism. That being the…

C4SS Media presents Jason Lee Byas‘ “Abolishing Capital Punishment is Not Enough” read by Trevor Hultner and edited by Nick Ford. When we are disgusted by the unnecessary pain inflicted even on those who’ve inflicted unnecessary pain, we are disgusted with retribution. When we are outraged by the horror of a botched execution, we are outraged by the use…

In 1982 Murray Rothbard published his magnum opus in political philosophy, The Ethics of Liberty. It is a tour de force, a remarkable presentation of the moral case for political freedom. What a complement to Man, Economy, and State and Power and Market, Rothbard’s towering contributions to our understanding of free markets! The first striking feature of Ethics is that the…

C4SS Media presents Jonathan Carp‘s “How to Kill a Man” read by Trevor Hultner and edited by Nick Ford. But if we can’t face the man on his knees, and if we don’t want to see ourselves as the man holding the pistol, should we be killing at all? Clayton Lockett was tortured to death last night so we…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “Education and Equity” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Any genuine proposal for educational reform will have to start with the distribution of power and privilege in society at large. And the idea that the state — whose main function is to serve, maintain and reproduce this distribution of power…

Senior Fellow and Trustee at the Center for a Stateless Society David D’Amato joins Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus for a conversation about the idea of voluntary socialism through the lens of the individualist anarchists of the 19th century. They discuss the life and philosophy of Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, and others, and explain how…

C4SS Media presents Jonathan Carp‘s “Fernando Teson Doesn’t Learn” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Of course, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine do not have the option of staying uninvolved. The wolf is at their door, it seems. While we of course wish them well, a sober analysis of the military situation does…

C4SS Media presents Kevin Carson‘s “With ‘Socialists’ Like Lawrence and Wishart, Who Needs Capitalists?” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. For the forces of information freedom, and other movements associated with the successor economy, to attempt to fight the established interests of the existing system for control of the state, is like an army…

A considerable portion of the Left has been diverted lately by a dispute between Lawrence & Wishart (the Marxist publishing house that owns the copyright to the multi-volume Collected Works of Marx and Engels in English) and the Marxist Internet Archive over the latter’s online digital version of the Collected Works. In surveying this dust-up,…

Recently we heard from Ukraine of a flyer distributed by Russian separatists in Donetsk. The flyer ordered the Jews of the city to register and pay a fee as a penalty for the support of Jewish leaders for the new government in Kiev. The flyer was denounced by American secretary of state John Kerry and…

C4SS Media presents Gary Chartier‘s “We Should Abandon The Term ‘Capitalism‘” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Advocating liberty means opposing the use of force to restrain peaceful, voluntary exchange. But it doesn’t have to mean calling a system of peaceful, voluntary exchange “capitalism.”

About 2,748,978 Americans are employees of the federal government. The population of the US is somewhere around 317,940,000. The federal government takes 17.3% of Gross Domestic Product in taxes. So the average federal employee controls a little more than 20 times as much of each year’s produced wealth as the average American. And it’s not…

Charles Johnson giving the talk “What is Anarchism?” at the University of Oklahoma. http://youtu.be/smd8jixlUos

C4SS Media presents William Gillis‘ “The Retreat Of The Immediate” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. The world is not a simple place and simplistic abstractions (even in the form of “shit’s too complicated” or “we’re sure to lose”) do violence through irresponsibility. Further they signal a cognitive surrender to the ossified and sweeping logic…

My name is Nick Ford and I would like to welcome you to this blog of mine, Hardly Working. The goal of this blog is to promote a future where none of us will have to work. And by “work” I don’t mean just giving effort, but labor that we give to others under systematic…

Gary Chartier answers questions after giving the talk “Achieving Social Justice Through Liberty” in September of 2013 at the University of Oklahoma. http://youtu.be/81uWXAiTC0k

It’s common for Democrats to depict themselves as the “party of compassion,” as opposed to the Wall Street stooges in the GOP,  resorting to soccer mom rhetoric about “American working families” and “sitting around the kitchen table.” Republicans, on the other side, frame themselves as the “free enterprise” party — unlike those anti-business socialists on…

Gary Chartier gives the talk “Achieving Social Justice Through Liberty” in September of 2013 at the University of Oklahoma. http://youtu.be/yYGYH3eC5yI

Kyle Platt chats with Sheldon Richman about the recent standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy. Who has a claim to the land? Can a government own land?

After yet another terrifying botched execution, questions about whether the death penalty constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” once again fill the air. Perhaps, though, now may be time to pose even more radical questions about criminal justice. The particular incident sparking national attention this time was a lethal injection in McAlester, Oklahoma that failed to…