When massive Western corporations provide relief and assistance during a pandemic, these stories are easily framed by corporate communications teams, the government, and mass media as some sort of angelic benevolence. This is, at most, half the story.  Many have hailed these companies for “stepping up” as they turn their productive capacities to producing things…

The great advantage of the anarchist movement is our decentralization, but without resilient protocols and networks we’re always at risk of losing pieces of our history and knowledge. There have been a number of compilations of anarchist and left-market anarchist pamphlets and zines over the years, and unfortunately most of them have decayed or fallen…

Please pardon our absence! As you can probably guess, the pandemic and related stresses led to a bump in our production schedule. But now, we’re back on track — and have two fresh episodes to boot… First, check out our interview with Libertarian Party presidential hopeful Vermin Supreme. You might know Vermin as the candidate…

Our next episode is with C4SS fellow Jason Lee Byas. Jason is also a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Michigan and his academic work focuses on punishment (and its alternatives), rights theory, and justice beyond the state. Today, we discussed some recent work he’s been doing on “methodological anarchist” approaches to political…

[Listen to a Mutual Exchange Radio Podcast discussing this essay here] Ideas related to Universal Basic Income (UBI) have been gaining some traction lately with the goals of mitigating inequality, addressing the increasing precarity of technological unemployment, and attempting to ensure that people can meet their basic needs. As an anarchist seeking freedom for all,…

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,…

If you’re involved at all in the micromanufacturing, hardware hacking, or open-source hardware communities, or interested (as I am) in their potential for economic relocalization and for undermining corporate power, you’ve probably seen a story going around about makers in Italy 3D printing valves to keep ventilators running for COVID-19 patients in critical condition. According…

Looking at the news on the COVID-19 (or coronavirus) pandemic, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is one of those lifeboat situations in which a crisis cannot be managed without a resort to large-scale social coercion. China and South Korea seem to have turned the tide on the pandemic, with a reduced number…

When talking to your local anarcho-syndicalist on why someone should join their union, they usually give a long list of all the things taken for granted today that are the result of organized labor fights in the past, with the weekend being the most enthusiastically mentioned. Now it is easy to believe that the eight-hour…

You can now subscribe to Mutual Exchange Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. This month’s discussion at the C4SS podcast Mutual Exchange centers around Long’s work on libertarian class theory, as well as the normative concerns that rise out of such a theory on balancing distributive and relational justice concerns with individual liberty. As we…

“They’re even gassing children!” A small affinity group of teenagers raced past me, all in black bloc, one member slowing down only to look at me. I had put my red bandanna away, soaked as it was in tear gas and pepper spray. What remained was a skinny thirteen year old kid in a bright…

In a couple of earlier pieces, C4SS writers Frank Miroslav and Black Cat argued, respectively, that the frequently stated principle “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is a “thought-stopping cliche,” and — in response — that “there really is no ethical (individual) consumption under capitalism.” As I read it, the disagreement between them is…

I have a personal rule — I think you should never review a book that you strongly disagree with or strongly agree with. If you entirely agree, then a “review” would be nothing more than an echo. But if you strongly disagree there’s also little point to writing a review, the disagreements cannot be isolated…

Let me begin by saying that I’m glad this book exists. Phillips and Rozworski are upfront about their book not containing any radical new insights into questions of economic planning, but instead they compile arguments made by others in a highly readable format, something that those on the left who argue for economic planning have…

Anarchist bookfairs are one of the most interesting features of anarchist life. A bookfair is immediately recognizable as hierarchical. There are the booksellers and there are the consumers. What separates the two is not merely the physicality of a table, but the capital investment it represents. Those distroing have usually been required to purchase space…

It is not a coincidence that when patents and copyrights are described in formal documents or discussions they are always labeled as “intellectual property” and virtually never as the simple term “property.” Calling it simply property would generate confusion with actually existing forms of private property, such as land, cars, and stocks. Such private property…

This article does an excellent job of unpacking the statism that is implicit in nominally “laissez-faire” right-libertarian models of free trade and free markets. By way of background, the main current of what is called “libertarianism” in the United States, and “liberalism” elsewhere, treats the Gilded Age as a satisfactory proxy for the “free market.”…

Even if you’ve never read a comic book or seen a superhero movie, Stan Lee has affected your life. His storytelling. His approach to heroism. His moral lessons. His ethos, embodied in the catchphrase “Excelsior!” The Mount Rushmore of modern pop culture surely has a spot for him. His imagination permeates humanity’s modern collective imagination….

Automation, the reduction and/or removal of human participation in processes and procedures, has been a topic of economic discussion since the Industrial Revolution. The general dispute has been about whether or not automation will lead to mass unemployment. Acknowledging but passing over the primitivist perspective, in the 20th and 21st century, two camps have taken…