How can you tell an American progressive from an American radical? A progressive laments the condition of working people and proposes to further empower the government. A radical laments the condition of working people and proposes to empower individuals by diminishing the power of government. Of course government power and individual power differ in kind:…
If you’ve been paying attention to the trends of copyright law in the last ten years or so you may have noticed something: Corporations are gaining more and more power over what they claim is rightfully “theirs”. One of the largest company in making agricultural machinery, John Deere, is the latest in this destructive trend…
Support C4SS with Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” Audio version, read by Mike Gogulski • Introduction to the Portuguese Version of Iron Fist • • Versione in italiano • • Версия на русском • << Back to the Market Anarchism FAQ page Introduction Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by…
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (W.W. Norton & Company 2014), 320 pages. The subject of this book is the “second machine age,” in which “computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power — the ability to use our…
Binoy Kampmark discusses the atrocities of the Shia militias. Anand Gopal discusses the creation of an Afghan Blackwater. Laurence M. Vance discusses limiting the government’s carbon footprint. David S. D’Amato discusses decentralism and libertarianism. Kevin Schwartz discusses hyping a proxy war in Yemen. Laurence M. Vance discusses the drug war litmus test. Glenn Greenwald discusses…
A recent story on the British elections reports on a letter warning voters that a Labour government would prove harmful to the country’s economic recovery. Endorsed by leaders in Britain’s business community and submitted to The Telegraph, the letter argues that the election of a Tory government would signal to the rest of the world…
Origin Story Those who are not familiar with comic books and the history surrounding them may be confused about the recent kerfuffle over the Batgirl cover and it being pulled. Never fear! For I have in my Utility Belt of Knowledge, the proper gadgets to give some context and offer critique. Batgirl, or Barbara Gordon as she is better…
James R. Otteson. The End of Socialism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Otteson’s book is an eloquent defense of an economic system which maximizes decentralism and autonomy; it’s just not, as he supposes, a defense of capitalism. Likewise, it’s a good critique of centralized planning and top-down authority — but not of “socialism.” Otteson…
Murray Bookchin. The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy. Foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York and London: Verso, 2015). This book is a collection of Bookchin’s essays on libertarian municipalism and communalism, extending from the period when he still considered himself an anarchist until his final post-anarchist phase. In…
We must face the fact that criticism of the libertarian philosophy in the mass media will most likely misrepresent its target, making the commentary essentially worthless. That’s painfully clear from what critics publish almost weekly on self-styled left-wing and progressive websites. How refreshing it would be for someone to set forth the strongest case for…
It is difficult to take a political work seriously with the word “nanny” in the title, but Dean Baker’s 2006 book the “Conservative Nanny State” is a serious book and a decent introduction to some often overlooked market distortions that benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else. It also has the advantage of…
Objectivist scholar Chris Sciabarra, in his brilliant book Total Freedom, called for a “dialectical libertarianism.” By dialectical analysis, Sciabarra means to “grasp the nature of a part by viewing it systemically — that is, as an extension of the system within which it is embedded.” Individual parts receive their character from the whole of which…
The week before last, at the International Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC), Ron Paul once again misgendered and deadnamed whistleblower and hero, to libertarians everywhere, Chelsea Manning in a speech. Though his words otherwise sounded supportive, they indicate someone who at best hasn’t paid attention to any news pertaining to her. More likely, he and…
These three short stories all come from the same Cory Doctorow collection, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007). Free download here. The three are all set against a background of what I call the “DRM Curtain,” a transnational corporate Empire based on artificial scarcities enforced through a maximalist version “intellectual…
On January 20, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced the Apollo 1201 project, an effort to eradicate digital rights management (DRM) schemes from the world of Internet commerce. Led by well-known activist Cory Doctorow, the project aims to “accelerate the movement to repeal laws protecting DRM” and “kick-start a vibrant market in viable, legal alternatives to…
New corporate enclosures, looting and monopolies are springing up all over the place these days. Watching the news is a lot like watching Robocop or Blade Runner, what with stuff like Detroit’s “Emergency Manager” auctioning off local assets to corporate cronies the same way Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority did in Iraq. Given all that,…
A persistent theme in popular culture, when it comes to issues of technological progress and the future, is that the super-rich will be the main beneficiaries of new technology. Billionaires with artificially augmented lifespans will retreat into their gated communities and anarcho-capitalist enclaves; the rest of us will live lives nasty, brutish and short, subject…
The deplorable attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which terrorists killed 12 and wounded 11, incited several reactions from the public, the sensitized media, and heads of state who hope to extract political gain from the matter. Amidst the generalized panic, Islamophobia has risen once again (due to the religious motivations of the attack) and…
On NAASN, an email list for anarchist academics, Wayne Price (whose review of my book I previously replied to here) responded to someone else’s proposal to “abolish the state and see if capitalism survives until sunrise” as follows: [This is] what most people probably think anarchists advocate: society just as it is but with no…
C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Monopoly Privilege as “Individual Rights”” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. Market anarchists follow a tradition of libertarian socialism inaugurated by radicals like Josiah Warren and Benjamin Tucker, for whom capitalism was something very different from a legitimate free market. Examining the economic system of their day, they…
