By Dan Greene The 4am face of the lady behind the thick glass begins to talk to me, it never changes every time I come in. “Who is your doctor? Why are you bothering us at this time? We’ll get you seen in like an hour, go sit […]
By Karl Hess Panarchy.Org Note Karl Hess expresses, in the clearest and most powerful way, the fact that (a) libertarianism is a revolutionary idea and a revolutionary movement, and (b) libertarians are not there to defend private property, per se, but to uphold the life and freedom of […]
By Chris George A New Kind of Mind I typically describe myself as a “libertarian anarchist.” People who don’t understand what either word means will essentially assume that I’m doubly insane. Libertarian is a more friendly word; anarchist is generally perceived to be hostile. Libertarians are usually considered […]
By Petar Stanchev ROARMag.Org The dogmatic criticism of popular struggles for autonomy in Chiapas and Rojava reveals a colonial mentality that should be stamped out of our movement. Photo: comrades from the Revolutionary Anarchist Action (DAF) in Turkey express their solidarity with the Kurdish defenders of Kobani at […]
This post certainly raises some interesting theoretical questions By Jason Brennan Bleeding Heart Libertarians Some libertarians claim that the good consequences of markets and private property form part of the moral justification of these institutions. However, others endorse absolutist or near absolutist deontological political philosophies. They hold that by following […]
This article and the discussion that follows are an interesting discussion of ethnic and national conflict within and between anarchist movements around the world both historically and today. By Budour Hassan The appearance of the Egyptian Black Bloc in Cairo’s streets in January 2013 triggered gullible excitement in […]
The picture says it all. UndercoverInfo Towards the end of last year reports filtered through of an ‘anarchist’ revolution underway in the Kurdistan province of Rojava. It appeared to have all the trappings in place – equality of gender, redistribution of wealth, levelling of hierarchies – and even, […]
There are many such prototypes for anarchistic, voluntarist, or self-determined communities all over the world: Marinaleda, Christiania, Twin Oaks, Mondragon, Orania, Emilia-Romagna, and many others. Anarchists do not need to invent other-worldly utopias. We just need to expand the models that we already have. Two, three many Marinaleda’s!!!!! […]
By Dilar Dirik KurdishQuestion.Com Dilar Dirik
Kevin Carson reviews David Graeber. By Kevin Carson Center for a Stateless Society David Graeber. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2015). This book is, properly speaking, not a book at all, but a collection of […]
James C. Wilson Center for a Stateless Society This election cycle’s crop of uninspiring presidential hopefuls, now including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, must be a relief to those favoring mass disillusionment with electoral politics. No candidate, Rand Paul included, represents a convincing alternative to the status quo. Contrast […]
A libertarian municipalist response to Kevin Carson. By Hagbard Celine33 Post Scarcity Economics This is a response essay to Kevin Carson’s essay in response to libertarian municipalism. Here is a link to Kevin Carson’s essay so you can see what I am responding to. I wrote this essay […]
Panelists (Free for All): 1) Godfrey Bloom (Economist and former MEP) 2) Sean Gabb (Director, Libertarian Alliance) 3) Keith Preston (Attackthesystem.com) 4) Jakub Jankowski (Student) 5) Oliver Wilson (Student)
By Kevin Carson Center for a Stateless Society 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 Market for Liberty” by Morris and Linda Tannehill was published in 1969, and was one of the first books to really provide a fine-tuned description of how an anarcho-capitalist economy might work. It continues to be perhaps the most detailed of any work describing anarcho-capitalism in practice. […]
By Kevin Carson Center for a Stateless Society I keep resolving not to comment on any more of Alternet‘s by-the-numbers anti-libertarian puff pieces, but a recent one from David Masciotra (“You’re Not the Boss of Me: Why Libertarianism is a Childish Sham,” February 26) is in its own […]
Rothbard’s classic 1965 essay, “Left and Right: Prospects for Liberty,” is a must read for anarchists, libertarians, anti-statists, and decentralists of any species. This essay as much as any other really defines the historical context and trajectory of our common fight, irrespective of our other differences. By Murray […]
An interesting discussion of right-libertarianism by the late Jonathan Bowden and Richard Spencer. Leftists will be happy to know that as an actual hard rightist, Bowden places conventional libertarianism firmly on the right arguing that it’s to the right of even fascism on economic issues. It’s interesting to […]
By Paul Marks Libertarian Alliance The Soviet Union was not a perfect socialist country – for example about 3% of farm land was owned by individuals (the other 97% was socialist – either state owned or owned by “collectives” – i.e. the state by another name). However, the […]
A fantastic piece by Carson. Paul Marks’ rebuttal representing “the other side’s” point of view is worth reading as well. By Kevin Carson Libertarian Alliance/Center for a Stateless Society As a libertarian masochist who keeps up with the regular by-the-numbers attacks on libertarianism at Alternet and Salon, I […]
Paul Marks of the Libertarian Alliance offers these comments in response to my earlier piece, “A Critique of the State of Libertarianism.” : A bit “inside baseball” – but there is some practical stuff here that interests me. No – nobody I know regards 19th century Britain or […]
An interesting critique of anarchism. It’s important for ideologues and ideological writers to fairly acknowledge or confront weaknesses in their own positions. Btw. TheRightStuff.Biz has a lot of interested, irreverent commentary that’s well worth checking out. By Ghoul TheRightStuff.Biz Let’s talk about anarchy for a moment. Which kind […]
By Jesse Walker Reason Reason has obtained the federal government’s recent report on the sovereign citizens, a largely unorganized subculture whose elaborate legal theories say they do not have to follow most laws. Members of the movement are infamous for filing nuisance lawsuits, making their own drivers’ licenses […]
Find the common denominator.
Add to this respect for the associational, religious, economic, property, privacy, free inquiry, free speech, and due process rights of others, and they just might have something.
Some thoughts I originally posted in an online discussion concerning the various libertarian by-ways” There’s a big rivalry right now between the paleolibertarians, left-libertarians and “mainstream” LP/Cato/Reason type libertarians. The paleos and the leftists view the latter tendencies as establishment brown-nosers, and the mainstreamers view the radicals as […]
Somehow I can’t really picture these folks overthrowing any actual governments. By David Weigel “I’m on that f*** Jim Crow flow,” says Matthew La Corte. “I’m Thoreau meets Van Gogh after doing three lines of blow.” It’s Saturday night—Valentine’s Day, if you want to make an easy joke out […]
By Kevin Carson Center for a Stateless Society One of the grievances of the so-called GamerGate movement last August was an article by Dan Golding titled “The End of Gamers” (August 28, 2014). The title referred, not to the literal extinction of gamers as individuals, but of the […]
The big question that divides socialists and free marketers concerns the nature of markets themselves. Are markets merely a means to peaceful cooperation and exchange between human beings? Or do markets merely involve predatory competition between self-interested individuals seeking to maximize profitability at all costs? My answer: Obviously […]
By Keith Preston In the essay, “Liberty and Populism: Building an Effective Resistance Movement for North America,” written in 2006, I made the following observation: Ultimately, we may at some point be able to combine the Green, Libertarian, Populist, Constitution, Natural Law and other minor parties into a […]
By Lorenzo Del Savio and Matteo Mamelli Open Democracy The ideas of the Five Star Movement are best understood through their commitment to anti-representive democracy – a radical stance against traditional structures and institutions of representative democracy. Five Star Movement leader, Beppe Grillo. Demotix/eidon photographers. Some rights reserved. […]
By Alexander Kolokotronis New Politics In what many outside of the territory are referring to as the Rojava Revolution, a major shift in political philosophy and political programmatics has taken place in Kurdistan. Yet, this shift is not limited to the region of Rojava, or what many call […]
By Rhiann Sasseen “Farming women,” reads a page from a 1977 issue of Country Women Magazine. “Who are we? Young and old? What are the realities of our lives, our history, our farms?” The same questions could as easily be asked today, when more U.S. women are entering […]
By Silvia Boarini Al Jazeera Native Australians demonstrate for their rights [Al Jazeera] Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders activists hope 2014 will be remembered as the year they said: “Enough is enough.” Rosalie Kunoth-Monks has no doubt about it. “We are under assault,” she tells Al Jazeera. […]
By Pumza Fihlani BBC News In the sparsely populated Karoo desert in the heart of South Africa’s Northern Cape, the spirit of apartheid lives on. I spent a few days in Orania, a town established in 1991 where no black people live. I was part of a BBC […]
By Jade Small The OpenMind.Com With virtually no police, crime or unemployment, meet the Spanish town described as a democratic, socialist utopia. Unemployment is non-existent in Marinaleda, an Andalusian village in southern Spain that is prosperous thanks to its farming cooperative. READ MORE
By Emmy Favilla Buzzfeed This is Christiania. Stig Nygaard / Creative Commons / Via Flickr: stignygaard Its 84 acres sit on an abandoned military base, and it was founded in 1971 by squatters and artists as a “social experiment.” READ MORE
By Gareth Watkins CvltNation.Com The Middle East today is the last place anyone in mainstream western thought would think to look for progressive political thought, and even less to see those thoughts translated into action. Our image of the region is one of dictatorships, military juntas and theocracies […]
Perhaps one of the most problematic issues I have encountered when attempting to communicate the ATS message is the fact that I frequently comment on a variety of topics that are only casually related or even unrelated to the essential features of the ATS message. For example, I […]
By Dan Greene So Morrissey has cancelled a gig in Iceland because the venue refused to comply with his demand that all meat be removed from the building (he’s done this before also) and it seems that he demands this from all the venues where he performs. Now […]
I have my well-known differences with Carson, but his stuff is well worth reading. Check out his archives. By Kevin Carson Center for a Stateless Society New corporate enclosures, looting and monopolies are springing up all over the place these days. Watching the news is a lot like […]
I find value in the entire spectrum of not only anarchist but also libertarian or decentralist thought generally. On the far right end, the Koch brothers are great on civil liberties, but horrendous on economics. On the far left end, Chomsky is wonderful on foreign policy, and terrible […]
Caity and Dan present their ideas as to why so many people in Scotland have socialist tendencies, we chat about Margaret Thatcher, the poll tax (why Murray Rothbard thought that Thatcher had missed the point of a flat tax) and how future Scottish socialist politicians got their start […]
Caity and Dan welcome Keith Preston back to the show for a very interesting conversation about anarchist activist and writer Emma Goldman. We begin by chatting about Emma’s life and ideas and why they are still relevant today, the Haymarket affair, Alexander Berkman, if anarchists are born and not […]
It is not unreasonable to suggest that the decades ahead will witness the unfolding of a golden age of anarchism. What is the evidence for this? -The most powerful state in the world, the United States, the mother country of the empire, is slowly losing its internal legitimacy […]
It can reasonably be said that the overwhelming majority of liberals, progressives, social democrats, and Marxists would affirm all or most of the following presumptions: -The state is an expression of popular democracy (see Jean Jacques Rousseau) -The ever increasing centralization of institutions is conducive to economic and […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
Recent Comments