Let’s be clear from the outset: Conflict Is Not Abuse is not even remotely the same thing as the sentiment or thesis that “conflict is not abuse.” Much of the success Sarah Schulman’s book has seen is the result of people wanting a defense of the latter thesis and assuming her appropriation of the pre-existing…

Ash P. Morgans has a lengthy critique of the contributions made by a number of “moralists,” including myself. And in reading their response I realized that what I thought I had written—a relatively short piece with a narrow-focus—was, in fact, a confused mess. This doesn’t mean I now disagree with my arguments: I still think…

Written originally as notes for the Egoist and the Anarchist, consider this final essay as a kind of postscript where I hope to challenge what I see as a problematic line of thinking present throughout this symposium: a tendency I’ll call phrase-making. Countless modes of thought, from metaphysics to political discourse, rely on “phrases,” i.e.,…

Is anarcho-capitalism a form of anarchism? The resounding cry from anarchists of all stripes—including myself—is NO! The debate rages on, but two questions are raised by this claim: why isn’t it anarchism and if it isn’t anarchism then what is it? I believe the answers are: because it fails to meet the deeper commitments of…

Some Opening Thoughts First, I want to express my constant admiration for how comprehensible yet deeply frustrating I find Jason Lee Byas’ approach to anarchism (something I extend to the Center’s resident radical liberals and adherents to Aristotelianism more generally, more words on that to come). To mirror his repeated praise of the “amoralist’s challenge,”…

Partition & Entanglement: Review of Home Rule by Nandita Sharma “The entire, eons-long practice of human  movement  into  new  places  was  pushed  out  of  our  imagination — or,  perhaps more accurately, was reimagined as a national security threat. In the process, stasis was glorified as the normative way of being human.” “Only after the death…

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, four commercial airliners departing from Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey were hijacked mid-flight by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists who planned to crash each plane into a prominent building within the United States’ borders, causing mass casualties and property damage. At 8:46am, American Airlines Flight 11 was flown into the North Tower…

Eric Laursen. The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State. Foreword by Maia Ramnath (AK Press, 2021). Much of the ground Laursen covers in this book is already familiar to most anarchists. He does an adequate job, or better, at all of it. His treatment of the ideological hegemony of the state is…

When we think about the term “abolition,” we think of removing our old notions or of breaking free from the constraints of tradition. We might conjure up the idea of wiping clean our slate and being left with the freedom to imagine things from the ground up, without being hindered by the structures of the…

View or download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s C4SS Study: The Methodenstreit Revisited: Marginalism and the Lost Power Context The Methodenstreit was a long-running and fairly acrimonious debate over the methodology of economic science, between Carl Menger (posthumously regarded as the founder of Austrian economics) and Gustav Schmoller of the German Historical School, which eventually…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] Thomas Malthus, in his infamous work An Essay on the Principle of Population, takes several sections to critique the ideas of arguably the first modern anarchist thinker William Godwin. In one, Malthus writes, The great error under which [Mr.]…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this and this episode of The Enragés] Mastering most things humans do requires lifetimes of practice. Woodworking, gardening, and painting are just a few crafts whose histories stretch back thousands of years. But modern telecommunication, the act of communicating nearly instantaneously with someone from afar,…

Can there be such a thing as a “conservative anarchist?” Yes, as is true of any broad political label – socialist, democrat, libertarian, the list grows longer every day as the far right tries to appropriate the language of other tendencies. Ultimately, one can identify with whatever values they want, this is the foundation of…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] Contrary to the assertions of some leftists there are in fact thoroughly monstrous people who are not just victims of their social conditions. Humans vary. We each follow somewhat random paths in the development of our values and instincts,…

How to ethically cover social unrest is a complex debate, it is also an increasingly necessary one “A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Martin Luther King, 1966 Bogota, Colombia – Civil unrest is often the only available tool for people without voices. From the United States, to Berlin, to India, to Moscow,…

Roman incursions into Britain began with Julius Caesar between 55-54 B.C.E. with two separate attempts. The first invasion (55 B.C.E.) was launched on the grounds of supposed support from the Britons towards the Gallic tribes against the Romans during the Gallic Wars (58-50 B.C.E.). This first attempt ended in failure, loosing their cavalry boarded on…

Emmi Bevensee’s article “Social-Anarchism and Parallel Economic Computation” is an excellent and important introduction to the challenges that complexity poses for economic planning. I think Emmi’s conclusion—that we need to sketch what the limits of planning are and pursue alternative mechanisms beyond this point—is a good one, as is pointing out that problems arise when…

There’s an eerie familiarity to the stay-at-home orders issued during COVID-19. I can’t help but relate this to my experience as an 11 year old during the month-long curfew after the communal riots of Bombay.  Growing up in India, communal life dominated our lives. While the state functioned along the lines of rigid, monopolistic, soviet-socialist…

The end of the world is upon us, or so it may seem. With COVID-19 spreading rapidly worldwide, a mixture of fear, precaution, and opportunism has led state governments to react in predictably authoritarian ways. While some officials have been fighting for moratoriums on evictions and utility shut-offs, paid sick leave, subsidized childcare services, Medicare…

Anarchists face the question: Without nations and states wouldn’t a free society be especially ravaged by pandemics? Who would enforce quarantines without rebuilding a centralized institution of violence? It’s a fair question. Anarchism isn’t about a finite goal, but an unending vector pointed towards increasing liberation. We’re not in the habit of “good enough” compromises,…