~the-anarchist-libra | Bookmarks (305)

Author: Pëtr KropotkinTitle: The anarchist idea and its developmentsDate: 1891Notes: Published first in La Révolte, year 5, number 6, October 31, 1891.Source: Retrieved on April 3, 2025 from https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/L%E2%80%99Id%C3%A9e_anarchiste_et_ses_d%C3%A9veloppements Anarchy means the negation of authority. But since authority claims to legitimize its existence based on the need to defend social institutions, such as the family, religion, and property, a host of mechanisms have emerged...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Yes, Politics is a Zero-Sum GameDate: November 14th, 2024Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org I find fodder for op-eds in some of the strangest places. I came across this video (“Politics is NOT a zero-sum game,” by Shai Davidai) in a HIT posted on Amazon Mechanical Turk by Davidai — an academic study in which he gauged viewers’ reactions to it. (For...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: How and How Not to Question the “Mainstream Narrative”Date: November 30th, 2023Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org In the unlikely event that anyone reading this is unfamiliar with him, Russell Brand is a one time more-or-less leftist who, like Naomi Wolf, has gone down the rabbit hole of batshittery (he endorses the “Great Reset” conspiracy, among other things). Rape accusations against Brand...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Another Stupid Right-Wing Talking Point That Won’t DieDate: March 25th, 2025Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org The right-wing talking point that Black poverty is the result, not of historic injustice, but of “Black culture” — and particularly the effect of Great Society welfare programs on Black culture — dates almost as far back as the Great Society itself. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Basic Income: The Wonderful World That Might Have BeenDate: February 26th, 2025Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Advocates of Basic Income have trotted out a lot of arguments for its benefits, but I never expected John Stossel (“Universal Basic Income Shows Why Giving People ‘Free Money’ Doesn’t Work,” Reason, October 9) to produce such a convincing one. When I was young, If...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: “Libertarian” Stossel Marginally Less Statist Than TrumpDate: December 16th, 2015Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Seemingly John Stossel never sits down to write without the goal of further lowering the bar for qualifying as a libertarian. This time (“My Trump Problem,” Reason, Nov. 11), he’s managed to push the criterion to the all-time low of being somewhat less statist than Donald Trump....

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Move Over, Hollywood: Stossel’s Writing His Own FantasyDate: July 13th, 2015Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Every time I write a commentary on one of John Stossel’s godawful columns, I tell myself I’ll lay off him for a while. But good lord, this latest wretched little piece of pro-corporate apologetics (“Corporations Have Become Hollywood’s Go-To Villains,” Reason, July 1) is about the...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: John Stossel: A Parody of Self-ParodyDate: May 27th, 2015Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Every time I read a column by John Stossel, I think my estimation of him has fallen to its theoretical limit. And then I read the next one. For years, Stossel has tipped his hat to the idea that “pro-market” and “pro-business” are not the same thing. He...

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 13.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: January 28, 1888Notes: Whole No. 117. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 3, 2025 from http://www.readliberty.org “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay...

Author: Sheldon RichmanTitle: Real Liberalism and the Law of NatureDate: August 10th, 2007Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org “Our leaders invent nothing but new taxes, and conquer nothing but the pockets of their subjects.” — Thomas Hodgskin Is government the source of our rights? I fear that today many people would say yes. Not infrequently it is said that the government or the Constitution grants...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Nice Hypothesis You Got There, Walter…Subtitle: …Be a Shame If Somebody Tried to Falsify ItDate: March 6th, 2025Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org The Foundation for Economic Education’s specialty is making “arguments” via the uncritical assertion of right-wing talking points. If anybody’s the go-to guy for that, it’s Walter Block — especially when if it’s the worn-out “minimum wages cause unemployment” talking...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: The Disconnect Is Coming From Inside the HouseDate: November 25th, 2024Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org At Reason, C.J. Ciaramella (“Tim Scott Says UAW Workers Should Be Fired, Invoking Ronald Reagan”) gives GOP Presidential hopeful Tim Scott two stars for his proposal to fire striking auto workers like Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers and broke PATCO: “He said, you strike, you’re...

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: The Weird Correlation Between “Understanding Economics” and PayolaDate: October 6th, 2024Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org For more years than most of us have been alive, by-the-numbers “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” puff pieces have been an almost daily staple at right-libertarian propaganda sites like Foundation for Economic Education. As I remark every time I see one — more than once in...

Author: Margaret KilljoyTitle: Mythmakers & LawbreakersSubtitle: Anarchist Writers on FictionDate: 2009Source: Archive.org Introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson THIS BOOK COLLECTS FOURTEEN INTERVIEWS WITH WRITERS who have either described themselves as anarchists, written about anarchists in historical or contemporary settings, or invented fictional cultures that they or others have called anarchist. Each person’s story is different, naturally, and the definitions they have given for anarchism...

Author: Julian LangerTitle: When We Are Human, by John Zerzan – a reviewDate: 17 July 2021Source: <ecorevoltblog.wordpress.com/2021/07/17/when-we-are-human-by-john-zerzan-a-review> [DISCLAIMER] – following the publication of this review Zerzan has apologised publicly on his radio show for his piece on autism and I personally consider the matter to be resolved, though I can’t speak for anyone else. If you want to hear the apology, the episode can...

Author: Crimethinc, AnonymousTitle: The Only Immigrant Trying to Steal My Job Is Elon MuskSubtitle: A Bus Driver’s Perspective on Elon Musk’s Austerity MeasuresDate: February 24th, 2025Source: https://crimethinc.com/2025/02/24/the-only-immigrant-trying-to-steal-my-job-is-elon-musk-a-bus-drivers-account-of-life-in-the-trump-era Introduction In the following narrative, a bus driver describes how the cuts that Elon Musk is carrying out in the federal government are affecting ordinary public transit workers. There is a poetic opposition between the figure of...

Author: Jean DrezeTitle: Chomsky in IndiaDate: 2014Notes: This is Jean Dreze’s introduction to the book Democracy and Power, by Noam Chomsky (OpenBook, 2014).Source: Democracy and Power Sometime around 1991 I wrote to Noam Chomsky and invited him to give a few lectures in India. It felt like wishful thinking – for one thing, I had no idea how his visit would be financed, if...

Author: David S. D’AmatoTitle: Military Revolution and the New State PowerSubtitle: The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)Date: March 30, 2025Source: Retrieved on March 30, 2025 from https://dsdamato.substack.com/p/military-revolution-and-the-new-state Introduction: the Empire and the Thirty Years’ War The dimensions of the modern state are remarkably little well understood given its dominant role in social and economic life today. As Peter Kropotkin argued in The State: Its Historic...

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 12.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: January 14, 1888Notes: Whole No. 116. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 1, 2025 from http://www.readliberty.org “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay...

Author: Miguel Brea, miltante de LizaTitle: We Are Anarchists — A Plea Against Political IndefinitionSubtitle: A Plea Against Political IndefinitionDate: 11/01/2024Source: https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/01/11/alegato-contra-la-indefinicion-politica/ We Are Anarchists. A Plea Against Political Indefinition. Talking with some comrades from the libertarian movement and sharing the ideas and practices that guide our activism, the question has arisen more than once as to whether it is necessary to define ourselves...

Author: Liza — Plataforma Anarquista de MadridTitle: Popular Power and Especifist AnarchismDate: 29/05/2024Source: www.regeneracionlibertaria.org Ideas for Creating the Revolution to Come: Popular Power and Specifist Anarchism The objective of this article is to reflect on Popular Power as an emancipatory strategy and examine how it relates (to a greater or lesser extent) with different revolutionary trends and currents, particularly those associated with the libertarian...

Author: RegueTitle: The Trap of HorizontalismDate: 13/02/2024Source: https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/02/13/la-trampa-de-la-horizontalidad/ The Trap of Horizontalism, within anarchism, has been a burden for nearly half a century. It’s time now to shed that weight in order to move forward. Experiential and activist anarchism has emphasized personal experience, navigating between the individual and the small community. Experimentation as a means to “live anarchism” here and now. And in doing...

Author: Miguel BreaTitle: Occupy and Resist?Date: 11/04/2024Source: www.regeneracionlibertaria.org On March 13, La Ferroviaria, a self-managed social center (CSO) in Madrid, awoke surrounded by state repressive forces ensuring its eviction, despite the dozens of activists from various currents and organizations gathered at its doors. In Sabadell and Zaragoza, the same scene played out at the social centers L’Obrera and Loira. A week later, the threat...

Author: Miguel BreaTitle: From the Outside?Subtitle: A Reading of Fifty Shades on BonannoDate: 18/04/2024Source: www.regeneracionlibertaria.org In March of this year, Miquel Amorós published Reading Fifty Shades of Bonanno with Calumnia—a work of research and critique on the thought of the Italian author who passed away just six months ago. While reading it, we couldn’t help but repeatedly think about two things: first, the striking...