Two Letters from Voltairine de Cleyre on the McKinley Assassination: McKinley’s Assassination from the Anarchist Standpoint (1907) Six years have passed since William McKinley met his doom at Buffalo and the return stroke of justice took the life of his slayer, Leon Czolgosz. The wild rage that stormed through the brains of the people, following…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kelly Vee‘s “Sex Slavery Revisited” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. “When de Cleyre used the phrase ‘sex slavery,’ she was referring to laws that existed at the time permitting men to rape their wives as well as cultural expectations regarding the way women should dress, behave, and generally carry…

One of my favorite anarchists and writers of all time was recently featured by actress Mary Tuomanen. Tuomanen read an excerpt from perhaps my favorite essay by de Cleyre called The Dominant Idea and it was presented during the 2015 Voices of a People’s History at Plays and Players in Philadelphia. Just for some background, the main…

Voltairine de Cleyre, anarchica senza aggettivi vissuta tra il diciannovesimo e il ventesimo secolo, diceva nel suo saggio “Anarchism and American Traditions” che “…lo stato per sua natura tende a diventare una cosa a parte, un’istituzione che esiste per il proprio bene, che depreda le persone, che insegna tutto ciò che può aiutarlo a mantenere…

Voltairine de Cleyre, the 19th and 20th century anarchist without adjectives, stated in her essay, “Anarchism and American Traditions” that, “…the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.” If the…

In 1890, anarchist feminist Voltairine de Cleyre published Sex Slavery, a short speech in defense of Moses Harman, a women’s rights supporter who was prosecuted under Comstock law for publishing allegedly obscene material. De Cleyre argued that in her society, women were viewed as the property of their husbands, and had little power over their…

The critically acclaimed film Selma‘s conspicuous absence from Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for David Oyelowo’s portrayal of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. follows its concerted targeting by flunkies of Lyndon B. Johnson outraged by its portrayal of friction between King and the arch-war criminal president. One leading critic,…

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Dominant Idea” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Dominant Idea“. $1.50 for the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “A Glance at Communism” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Voltairine de Cleyre, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. An Anarchist-Communist is a person who is a man first and a Communist afterward. He generally gets into a great many irreconcilable situations at once, believes that property and competition must…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “The Individualist and The Communist: A Dialgoue” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Voltairine de Cleyre, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. COM.: “Well, I admit that much. Certainly the employé cannot compete with his employer.” INDV.: “Then you admit that there is not free competition in the present state…

C4SS Feed 44 republishes Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “Anarchism and American Traditions” read and edited by Rhonda Federman. Feed 44: http://www.c4ss.org/ http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2 http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia Bitcoin tips welcome: 1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB

My first call to Direct Action was sparked by the scores of undocumented immigrants from Central America that ICE has been shipping to Phoenix. An AZ Central article reports that “The Border Patrol says about 400 migrants were flown from Texas to Arizona because of [a] surge in migrants being apprehended in Texas.” This mass…

At first glance, a no-holds-barred conversation with an anarchist might seem the most inappropriate centerpiece imaginable for a magazine issue marking the bicentennial of the United States of America. But then again, Karl Hess was no ordinary “anarchist.” For all its brazen anti-statism, Hess’s “red-white-and-blue anarchy” fits like a glove with a cover that proclaims “Happy…

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 has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Voltairine de Cleyre’s “to try all strange sensations…” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Voltairine de Cleyre’s “to try all strange…

American traditions, begotten of religious rebellion, small self-sustaining communities, isolated conditions, and hard pioneer life, grew during the colonization period of one hundred and seventy years from the settling of Jamestown to the outburst of the Revolution. This was in fact the great constitution-making epoch, the period of charters guaranteeing more or less of liberty,…

With the completion of the Voltairine de Cleyre Collection (at least for now…) I’d like to round up the links so it will be easier for people to find where they are located on this site and elsewhere. You can look up the collection itself if you search, “Voltairine de Cleyre Collection” and you can…

C4SS Media presents Voltairine de Cleyre‘s “The Gates of Freedom“, read and edited by Nick Ford. The Gates of Freedom is probably one of Voltairine’s least known essays even though it’s probably one of her longer and more important ones. This essay is in much the same spirit of her classic essay, Sex Slavery but instead of talking about…

The Gates of Freedom is probably one of Voltairine’s least known essays even though it’s probably one of her longer and more important ones. This essay is in much the same spirit of her classic essay, Sex Slavery but instead of talking about the general phenomenon, here Voltairine mostly focuses on arguments that justify this…

In the final speech Avrich collected in The First Mayday, Voltairine explains why August Spies and the martyrs all alike held the traits of the common-man and why this is an admirable trait. She goes at length admitting many so-called “faults” of the common-man but then reversing the dialogue and conversation and showing it as…