February 2012
24 posts
1 tag
Communal Property: A Libertarian Analysis
Kevin Carson’s thirteenth research paper, “Communal Property: A Libertarian Analysis,” argues that the libertarian defense of property doesn’t apply only to fee simple individual property. Communal Property: A Libertarian Analysis
Communal Property: A Libertarian Analysis
By Kevin Carson
“The Dominant market anarchist view of property takes for granted...
1 tag
On Brandon Darby and "Sanctioned Use of Force"
In a recent column (“Should Occupy Use Violence? I Dunno — Should the Cops?” Center for a Stateless Society, February 10) I deny that the state is a morally privileged entity. State violence — and police violence in particular — is subject to the same universal moral standards as violence by private individuals and associations. Indeed, I challenge the very idea that...
1 tag
Gary Chartier on Mental Self-Defense Radio
On February 27, 2012, C4SS Board and Advisory Panel member Gary Chartier appeared on K-Talk Radio’s Mental Self-Defense Radio with Jake Shannon. The show, around an hour and four minutes into the program, features Chartier, Tom Garrison, and Jake Shannon discussing, in the limited time available, such topics as the possible differences between “capitalism” and a freed market,...
1 tag
The Ethos of Empire
According to USA Today, “A gunman killed two American military advisers with shots to the back of the head Saturday [February 25] inside a heavily guarded ministry building.” The story notes that the Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the killings and cited them as “retaliation for the Quran burnings” at an American military base.
Responding to the attack, General John Allen, commander of...
1 tag
Do-It-Yourself Regulation
In a recent post at the UK’s Libertarian Alliance Blog, Director Sean Gabb points out that “government charters, grants personhood to, mandates sales for, creates price floors for, regulates industries to eliminate competition for, allows former employees to regulate their own, responds to lobbying by, bails out, subsidizes, [and] is comprised of politicians whose campaigns are...
1 tag
Media Coordinator Update, 02/24/12
Dear C4SS Supporters,
Content is picking back up at the Center. This week, I’ve submitted 7,125 op-eds to 1,783 publications (all in North America; in addition to amount of content, scope also affects submission numbers).
With less content last week, and all US-centric content this week, it’s our pickup numbers that are down: Only two that I’ve found so far....
1 tag
Nazi Exceptionalism; or, How Godwin's Law Gets It...
Most participants in online debates are familiar with Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” The implicit corollary, of course, is that the first person to descend to such a comparison automatically forfeits the debate. Oddly enough, though, I don’t remember electing anyone named Godwin...
2 tags
Romney's "Free Enterprise System": As Statist as...
The rule of centralized state and bureaucratic machines is one of those things that the cultural reproduction apparatus teaches people to accept as “natural” or “inevitable” (“it must be more efficient, or it wouldn’t be this way;” “the people in charge make these rules for a reason”).
But in fact it is very much the result of human agency. In...
1 tag
The Motor of Motown Capitalism
Last week, in a speech in Grand Rapids and accompanying op-ed in the Detroit News, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney delivered what may have been his ultimate “pot meet kettle” moment. Rewinding a few years, Romney called the ’09 Chrysler bailout “a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style,” and complained of “sweetheart deals” from Washington.
That Mitt Romney has the gall to so...
1 tag
Anarchy Not Apathy
With the din of another presidential election overwhelming all other would-be news, it’s not easy to be among the uninterested. It isn’t just that you’re barraged with details of an election whose outcome doesn’t matter to you — it’s that the outcome actually doesn’t matter.
An indifference toward practical, electoral politics, however, shouldn’t be taken as apathy regarding political or...
1 tag
Media Coordinator Update, 02/17/12
Dear C4SS Supporters,
Sorry for the late update — I got busy with some personal stuff, and it just slipped my mind that it was Friday!
On the submission side of things, it’s been a slow week (not a lot of content to submit) — I’ve sent 4,542 Center op-eds to 2,762 publications around the globe.
A better than usual week for pickups, though — ten of’em, as...
1 tag
The New Enclosures
Early Tuesday (February 14) morning, Bloomberg reported on Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings for a cool $12.5 billion. Noting that the deal leaves Google with “17,000 additional patents,” the story called the transaction “the largest wireless-equipment deal in at least a decade,” implicating what the EU’s antitrust czar cites as “increasingly strategic use of patents in the...
1 tag
David Goodway. Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow
David Goodway. Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward (PM Press edition, 2012).
I’ll start by saying I found this a very engaging read. I learned a lot of interesting new things about people whose thought I had already encountered, like Morris, Huxley and Orwell, and developed a strong appreciation for those...
1 tag
Gary Chartier on Reason.tv
C4SS Advisory Panel member Gary Chartier ‘sat down with Reason.tv’s Zach Weissmueller to discuss why libertarians should stop embracing the word “capitalism,’ why there’s reason to take the concerns of the political Left seriously, and why the economic system in the United States does not even begin to resemble a free market.”
Original Article
4 tags
Contraception Debate Misses a Basic Question
There’s been plenty of argument over proposed federal regulations requiring employers to offer health plans covering contraception for women. But few people bring up the basic question: Why is it considered normal for your boss to determine your healthcare options in the first place?
Relying on employers for healthcare means the company has more leverage over the worker. If you’re out of...
1 tag
Media Coordinator Update, 02/10/12
Dear C4SS supporters,
This week I’ve submitted 9,069 Center op-eds to 2,764 publications worldwide.
So far I’ve found five “pickups” of Center op-eds this week.
Three of them are in the Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age (which we’re proud to see continuing its regular use of our content!): David D’Amato’s “The Plague of ‘Political Will’”...
2 tags
Should Occupy Use Violence? I Dunno -- Should the...
Back in the mid-1980s, when the African National Congress was still fighting the South Africa’s apartheid regime, I recall Secretary of State George Schultz testifying before some Senate committee. He clutched his pearls at the appearance that “some members of this body are speaking in favor of violence.”
Even then, when I wasn’t an anarchist or anything approaching it, I...
2 tags
More Conflationism in the News
In a recent column, I referred to Auburn University Professor Roderick Long’s concept of “conflationism”:
“Left-conflationism is the error of treating the evils of existing corporatist capitalism as though they constituted an objection to a freed market. Right-conflationism is the error of treating the virtues of a freed market as though they constituted a justification of...
1 tag
Italian Mutualist Domenico Letizia on Mutualism as...
Italian mutualist Domenico Letizia, in “Un’ analisi storica del mutualism, possibile “sostituto libertario” del welfare moderno,” (Istituto de Politica, Oct. 23, 2011), considers historic European working class mutualist organization as a model for anti-state welfarism.
Original Article
1 tag
If You Have to Ask Why, the Answer is Usually...
One major problem with writing political commentary is that it’s often difficult look at something that seems … well, crazy … and find a rational explanation for it. It’s easier to just write off what looks like craziness as craziness and move on. But in the real world, there is in fact method to most people’s madness. This applies even to politicians who have...
1 tag
Romney & Co. vs. "the Very Poor"
Mitt Romney’s latest “Gaffe of the Week” is revealing: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there; if it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” Playing into every negative perception of Romney as a latter-day robber baron, the comment coursed through the news cycle.
It’s easy enough to understand why: The mouthpieces of the Washington-Wall Street nexus never tire of...
1 tag
Media Coordinator Update, 02/03/12
Dear C4SS Supporters,
This week I’ve submitted 11,048 Center op-eds to 2,763 publications on seven continents, and have identified seven op-ed “pickups”:
The Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age published Darian Worden’s “Egypt: A Year of Revolution” on January 27; David D’Amato’s “End War by Ending the State” on January 31; Kevin Carson’s...
1 tag
"American Exceptionalism;" or, It's Not State...
Auburn University philosophy professor Roderick Long coined the term “conflationism” for the tendency to confuse the free market — whether in accusatory or apologetic polemics — with actually existing capitalism. Left-conflationism is the practice of attacking the evils of actually existing corporate capitalism as if they were the result of “laissez-faire” or...
1 tag
The Plague of "Political Will"
BBC News reports that negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan, which broke away as a separate state earlier this year, have reached an impasse.
Disputes over oil are nothing new in the region, and the border of the countries is also in question as tensions increase, rousing concerns that the bloody civil war between the countries, fresh in memory, could reignite.
According to South Sudan,...