The Center for a Stateless Society is an anarchist think-tank and media center. Its mission is to explain and defend the idea of vibrant social cooperation without aggression or centralized authority.
Anarchists have always paid a lot of attention to feedback loops. Seemingly small actions, small arrangements, small evils tolerated, can rapidly or inexorably build up to systematic and seemingly omnipotent power relations. Things that, in isolation donât seem that bad, can lead to the formation of states or make those states even more authoritarian. Certain...
âIf you wait for a bully to throw the first punch every day you'll rarely win, sometimes you have to jump him first. We constrain institutions to simplistic rules because of the knowledge problems they face. Individuals on the other hand have an ethical obligation to behave as act consequentialists. And to save the overall connectivity of network sometimes you have to route around or sever damaged nodes.â
Mutual Exchange is the Center for a Stateless Societyâs effort to achieve mutual understanding through dialogue. As anarchists, we often try to make visible the myriad of state violence that usually goes unseen: the seemingly inexhaustible source of drone bombings, incarceration, police brutality, migrant detention, and the like, which terrorize individuals and their communities around...
If thereâs one deep and profound disagreement with the left I have itâs a systematic privileging of collective stability or unity over individual free association. Itâs a sad fact that leftist activists often hunger for community far more than they hunger for freedom. And one consequence of this is a persistent inability to deal with...
Charles Johnson: If libertarianism needs to slim down, which specific varieties of thickness does it need to avoidâand whatâs the health benefit to doing so?
Read as comments in reply to Jan Narvesonâs presentation at the second annual meeting of the Molinari Society (28 December 2005), during the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division conference in New York City.
Jan Narveson ably defends a conception of libertarianism as what he describes as a thinly moral doctrine. In order to do so he clears the ground with a hefty bundle of clarificatory remarks about thinness, thickness, morality, politics, culture, and where libertarianism properly locates itself within the conceptual regions marked out by these signposts. ...
Kevin Carson | @KevinCarson1 | Support this author on Patreon | April 30th, 2014
Americans have been conditioned to think of May Day as a âcommie holiday,â one associated until recently with military parades in Red Square and leaders of Marxist-Leninist regimes exchanging âfraternal greetingsâ in the names of their respective peoples. They might be surprised to learn it was originally an American holiday, created by Chicago workers in commemoration of the eight-hour day campaign and the Haymarket Martyrs.
Perhaps even more surprising â as much so to modern American libertarians as anyone else â is the fact that May Day is part of the free market libertarian movementâs heritage. Thatâs counter-intuitive for obvious reasons. Since the time of Mises and Rand, American libertarianism has generally been identified â often justifiably â with a reflexive defense of capitalism and big business. But despite the rightward political shift of the free market movement in the 20th century, there was a very large free market Left in the 19th century, frequently with close ties to the labor and socialist movements.
Classical liberalism had common Enlightenment roots, overlapping considerably in its origins with the early socialist movement. A broad current of thinkers, like the British Thomas Hodgskin and the American individualist anarchists (or Boston anarchists) around Benjamin Tucker and Liberty magazine, belonged within both the free market libertarian and libertarian socialist camps. In their view capitalism was a system in which the state intervened in the market on behalf of landlords and other rentiers, enforcing the artificial property rights, monopolies and artificial scarcities from which profit, interest and rent derived. They saw the proper goal of socialism as abolition of these monopolies, allowing market competition in the supply of capital and land to drive the assorted rents derived from them down to zero, so that the natural market wage of labor would be its full product. ...
Logan Glitterbomb | Support this author on Patreon | April 30th, 2016
When looking at history for examples of the establishment of anarchist societies we often think of the Spanish anarchists in Catalonia or the efforts of the Zapatista army in Mexico. These are both examples of groups using tactics of revolutionary armed conflict against the state and capitalism in an attempt to establish an autonomous stateless society in the here and now. And while anarchist Catalonia was eventually quashed by outside forces, the Zapatistas are still fighting on, albeit using different methods than before.
And then thereâs the Partiya KarkerĂȘn KurdistanĂȘâ (the Kurdistan Workersâ Party or PKK). Formally a Marxist-Leninist political party which fought to establish an independent Kurdish state called Kurdistan. However, under the guidance of their leader Abdullah Ăcalan, the party changed its platform and strategy. After Ăcalanâs imprisonment during which he corresponded with American anarchist Murray Bookchin and was deeply influenced by his philosophy of libertarian communalism, he called for the PKK to adopt a platform of democratic confederalism and dropped its demand for the establishment of a Kurdish state, instead advocating complete statelessness. ...
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A lost classic recovered from the pages of Liberty, this essay â never before collected in pamphlet form since its original serialization â is one of the most ambitious attempts to define the Individualist theory of property, and to provide both an Anarchistic defense of private property and market competition, and an attack on the regime of structural violence and legal privilege that sustains capitalism and subjugates the working class.
Can the millionaire capitalist, the labor-robbing idler who lives on interest, the rich thugs of today and their army of parasites, be taken as the outcome of private property? Surely not. They are the direct result of restrictions and privileges, of legal and governmental origin, â causes that render impossible the growth and diffusion of individual property among the mass of wealth-producers. Inequalities in possession exist not so much because of inequalities in the power of individuals to acquire wealth under free conditions, but because political, social, and economic arrangements have always tended to create artificial inequality, to foster and increase whatever natural inequality did exist . . . .
Support C4SS with William Baillieâs âProblems of Anarchismâ
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If you want to take direct action against the warfare State by resisting taxes, the next question is how you go about doing that. For those who want to avoid a potentially disastrous confrontation with the IRS, anti-war tax-resistance David Gross (of The Picket Line blog) offers this practical how-to guide on eliminating your tax liability by living simply, reducing your reported income, and taking advantage of tax credits available to low-income filers.
Support C4SS with David Grossâs âDonât Owe Nothin'â
Kevin Carson: Sigh. There you have it. Just about every single cliche from the Art Schlesinger historical mythology, condensed into one short passage for your convenience.
Logan Ferree, in âThe Role of the State in the Rise of the Corporation,â links to a debate heâs engaged in on that topic. Markos Moulitsas, in a widely read post proposing a libertarian-Democratic alliance, suggested that the power of large corporations had arisen from the free market, and that the twentieth century regulatory state had been imposed on big business to restrain it against its will.
In his own post at Daily Kos, Ferree linked to this challenge at Catallarchy blog:
Persuade me that corporate (coercive) power, to the extent that it exists, does not rest on governmental power at its foundation.
Ferree comments on liberalsâ failure
to offer up a response to [the libertarian] critique of the assumption that government protects us from corporations, instead of enabling themâŠ.
âŠIf you canât defeat libertarianism on this issue, perhaps itâs time to switch sides.
The worst historical idiocy in response, hands down, was this comment by massive not passive:
The only time Government empowers corporations at the expense of the people is when it allows them to avoid compliance of the laws put into place to protect us from the corporations. Also when the governments provide financial favors to certain companies. Only by ignoring the laws do governments aid the corps.
The truth â only under conservative governments are laws created to benefit corps â under an integrty-based progressive administration, laws will help people from the overreach of corporate power. If you want it done right, elect Democrats.
When corporations threatened our safety at work, government stepped in to create worker safety provisions, rights to collectively bargain and the ability to receive overtime pay after 40 hours of labor.
Government knew that the free market would not offer these protections.
When corporations sold unsafe products, such as meat (read Upton Sinclairâs âThe Jungleâ for details), government intervened to assure that corporations could not fool the consumer with lies to push unhealthy and possibly toxic consumables.
Once again, the free market was little help here.
When corporations threatened the cleanliness of our air and water, government stepped in to preserve the integrity of our natural resources. Because the free market was not going to do so.
Governments, largely under conservative administrations, have been manipulated into providing favors for certain corporations, via tax abatements, or the âlook the other wayâ approach in regards to disobeying safety/pollution/labor laws. But the reality is a removal of government oversight from corporations would leave this country in far worse shape than the current state.
Sigh. There you have it. Just about every single cliche from the Art Schlesinger historical mythology, condensed into one short passage for your convenience.
Ahem. The problem is not unequal enforcement of the laws. ...
Syriaâs military and al-Qaedaâs Nusra Front continued to trade fire in districts of the northern city of Aleppo today, and as has been the case in previous days the bulk of the casualties were civilians, with at least 20 civilians reported killed and scores of others wounded.
Syrian military airstrikes centered on the Sukkari neighborhood, in eastern Aleppo, with one of the strikes hitting a hospital and a neighboring civilian complex. 9 were killed, including one doctor, and a pair of young children. Six other civilians were reported slain in the area as well.
Al-Qaedaâs own firing targeted the western part of the city, with reports of at least 11 civilians killed in rocket and artillery fire. These attacks were initially reported by Syriaâs state media, and confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ...
In controversial âShared Responsibility Committees,â feds can tightly control and exploit treatment.
OF THE PLANS put forward by the federal government to identify and stop budding terrorists, among the least understood are the FBIâs âShared Responsibility Committees.â
The idea of the committees is to enlist counselors, social workers, religious figures, and other community members to intervene with people the FBI thinks are in danger of radicalizing â the sort of alternative to prosecution and jail time many experts have been clamoring for. But civil liberties groups worry the committees could become just a ruse to expand the FBIâs network of informants, and the government has refused to provide details about the program.
The Intercept has obtained a letter addressed to potential committee members from the FBI, outlining how the process would work. While the letter claims that committees will not be used âas a means to gather intelligence,â it also makes clear that information from the committees may be shared widely by the FBI, including with spy agencies and foreign governments, and that committee members can be subpoenaed for documents or called to testify in cases against the people they are trying to help. At the same time, committee members are forbidden even from seeking advice from outside experts without permission from the FBI. ...
This has always been intuitively clear. Now, there is mounting empirical evidence proving it.
A newly published study from Oxfordâs Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, the Washington Post this morningdescribed this phenomenon: âIf we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious.â
The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans were aware), there was âa 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned âal-Qaeda,â âcar bombâ or âTaliban.'â People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion. The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: âIf people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.â ...
An Oklahoma Highway Patrol official reportedly told women that the best way not to get raped by an officer was to âfollow the law.â
In recent months, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer and an Oklahoma City Police officer have been accused of repeatedly raping women, often during traffic stops.
After a Tulsa County sheriffâs deputy was arrested last week for sexually assaulting a woman while responding to a 911 call, Tulsa NBC News affiliate KJRH decided to ask the Oklahoma Highway Patrol how to stay safe during a traffic stop.
The department noted that troopers should always be in uniform, and that women were allowed to keep their car door locked, and to speak with officers through a cracked window. A trooper should rarely ask a person to come back to the patrol car, OHP advised. ...
A war machine led by someone oblivious to the notion that ordering troops to go into other peopleâs countries, destroying their homelands, threatening their populations and spreading violence may not solve political instability in the long-run.
Nick Ford, Obama: Living and Dying by the Sword in Iraq
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A groundbreaking presentation of Mutualist economic and social theory, freed-market anti-capitalism, and an industrialism of worker ownership and mutual exchange.
I have repeatedly been asked to write a brief summary of the aims sought by Anarchists which could be read and discussed in the various clubs that are studying economic questions. With this end in view the following pages are submitted, trusting that they may be a help to those who are earnestly seeking the rationale of the Labor Question. . . .
FREE EXCHANGE . . . would break the monopoly now possessed by currency, the instrument of exchange, and also could open full use of the possession of land. . . . Has the workman equal freedom to compete with the employer of labor? . . . But why not? Because behind the capitalist, as we now find him, privilege lends support which transforms the result of honest industry into a hideous Moloch standing with outstretched arms to receive as sacrificial victims the toilers who have made that capital possible. . . . Capital itself is manâs best friend, the true social savior that opens the march of progress and that has transformed society from warlike to peaceful pursuits. But under the crucifying hands of legalization, where prerogative mocks at penury, its mission is thwarted and it becomes a ravenous beast. . . . Reliance upon militant measures, trying to curb indusÂtrial discontent by legislative coercion, is reactionary in character. However disguised in twilight mixtures it is the spirit of the old regime seeking to dominate the new; as vain as seeking to check an exhaustless flow of water by damming the stream. The remedy cannot lie in enactments, in the organÂization of systems, in return to simplicity of structure, for industrial civilization demands plasticity of forms . . . while organization, on the other hand, ever tends to rigidity. . . .
The Economics of Anarchy was published at Chicago in 1890. Dyer D. Lum was a revolutionary anarchist, a labor organizer, and a pioneer of mutualist economics. He became involved in the labor movement through his trade as a bookbinder, and came into contact with Anarchists such as Albert Parsons and August Spies in Chicago. He was closely involved with support for the HayÂmarkÂet martyrs during the 1880s â he took up the editorship of Albert Parsonâs newspaper, The Alarm, after Parsonâs death, and it was Lum who smuggled a dynamite cap to Louis Lingg in prison (which Lingg used to commit suicide ahead of the noose). A collaborator and lover of Voltairine de Cleyreâs, and a prolific writer of both books and articles for Anarchist papers such as Twentieth Century, Liberty, and The Alarm, Lumâs Anarchism combined the radical individualism and anti-capitalist market anarchism of the Boston Anarchists, with an emphasis on worker ownership, radical solidarity, and the militant labor organizing of his Chicago revolÂutionÂary milieu.
Support C4SS with Dyer Lumâs âThe Economics of Anarchyâ
Roderick T. Long: At a time when emotions run high, how should we go about deciding on a morally appropriate response? Should we allow ourselves to be guided by our anger, or should we put our anger aside and make an unemotional decision?
The events of September 11th have occasioned a wide variety of responses, ranging from calls to turn the other cheek, to calls to nuke half the Middle East â and every imaginable shade of opinion in between. At a time when emotions run high, how should we go about deciding on a morally appropriate response? Should we allow ourselves to be guided by our anger, or should we put our anger aside and make an unemotional decision?
D. H. Lawrence once wrote:
My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle. What do I care about knowledge? All I want is to answer to my blood, direct, without fribbling intervention of mind or moral, or what not. (Quoted in Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (La Salle: Open Court, 1962), p. 47.)
At the other extreme, the Roman philosopher Seneca argued that we should never make a decision on the basis of anger â or any other emotion, for that matter. In his treatise On Anger, Seneca maintained that if anger leads us to make the decision we would have made anyway on the basis of cool reason, then anger is superfluous; and if anger leads us to make a different decision from the one we would have made on the basis of cool reason, then anger is pernicious. ...
Clive Thompson has an engaging piece in The New York Times Magazine called "The Minecraft Generation." Minecraft is a video game, but Thompson writes that
it doesn't really feel like a game. It's more like a destination, a technical tool, a cultural scene, or all three put together: a place where kids engineer complex machines, shoot videos of their escapades that they post on YouTube, make art and set up servers, online versions of the game where they can hang out with friends. It's a world of trial and error and constant discovery, stuffed with byzantine secrets, obscure text commands and hidden recipes. And it runs completely counter to most modern computing trends. Where companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google want our computers to be easy to manipulateâdesigning point-and-click interfaces under the assumption that it's best to conceal from the average user how the computer worksâMinecraft encourages kids to get under the hood, break things, fix them....It invites them to tinker.
Thompson points out that Minecraft has been getting a reputation among parents as "the 'good' computer game in a world full of anxiety about too much 'screen time.'" (Aside: If you're able to make distinctions like that, maybe it's time to stop lumping all sorts of different activities together under the "screen time" label?) So it's worth noting, as Thompson does, that this celebrated educational toy was not designed by educators, or even designed for kids. It was originally created for grown-ups, and it still has plenty of adult users, many of whom provide advice to younger players. ...
