Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Benjamin R. Tucker - The Attitude of Anarchism Toward Industrial Combinations

 

at 4/29/25 2:12am

Author: Benjamin R. TuckerTitle: The Attitude of Anarchism Toward Industrial CombinationsDate: 1903Notes: An address delivered by Benj. R. Tucker in Central Music Hall, Chicago, on September 14, 1899, before the Conference on Trusts held under the auspices of the Civic Federation.Source: Retrieved on April 29, 2025 from https://praxeology.net and https://catalog.hathitrust.org Having to deal very briefly with the problem with which the so-called trusts confront us, I go at once to the heart of the subject, taking my stand on these propositions: That the right to cooperate is as unquestionable as the right to compete; that the right to compete involves the right to refrain from competition; that co-operation is often a method of competition, and that competition is always, in the larger view, a method of co-operation; that each is a legitimate, orderly, non-invasive exercise of the individual will under the social law of equal liberty; and that any man or institution attempting to prohibit or restrict either, by legislative enactment or by any form of invasive force, is, in so far as such man or institution may fairly be judged by such attempt, an enemy of liberty, an enemy of progress, an enemy of society, and an enemy of the human race. Viewed in the light of these irrefutable propositions, the trust, then, like every other industrial combination endeavoring to do collectively nothing but what each member of the combination rightfully may endeavor to do individually, is per se, an unimpeachable institution. To assail or control or deny this form of co-operation on the ground that it is itself a denial of competition is an absurdity. It is an absurdity, because it proves too much. The trust is a denial of competition in no other sense than that in which competition itself is a denial of competition. The trust denies competition only by producing and selling more cheaply than those outside of the trust can produce and sell; but in that sense every successful individual competitor also denies competition. And if the trust is to be suppressed for such denial of competition, then the very competition in the name of which the trust is to be suppressed must itself be suppressed also. I repeat: the argument proves too much. The fact is that there is one denial of competition which is the right of all, and that there is another denial of competition which is the right of none. All of us, whether out of a trust or in it, have a right to deny competition by competing, but none of us, whether in a trust or out of it, have a right to deny competition by arbitrary decree, by interference with voluntary effort, by forcible suppression of initiative. Again: To claim that the trust should be abolished or controlled because the great resources and consequent power of endurance which it acquires by combination give it an undue advantage, and thereby enable it to crush competition, is equally an argument that proves too much. If John D. Rockefeller were to start a grocery store in his individual capacity, we should not think of suppressing or restricting or hampering his enterprise simply because, with his five hundred millions, he could afford to sell groceries at less than cost until the day when the accumulated ruins of all other grocery stores should afford him a sure foundation for a profitable business. But, if Rockefeller’s possession of five hundred millions is not a good ground for the suppression of his grocery store, no better ground is the control of still greater wealth for the suppression of his oil trust. It is true that these vast accumulations under one control are abnormal and dangerous, but the reasons for them lie outside of and behind and beneath all trusts and industrial combinations, – reasons which I shall come to presently, – reasons which are all, in some form or other, an arbitrary denial of liberty; and, but for these reasons, but for these denials of liberty, John D. Rockefeller never could have acquired five hundred millions, nor would any combination of men be able to control an aggregation of wealth that could not be easily and successfully met by some other combination of men. Again: There is no warrant in reason for deriving a right to control trusts from the State grant of corporate privileges under which they are organized. In the first place, it being pure usurpation to presume to endow any body of men with rights and exemptions that are not theirs already under the social law of equal liberty, corporate privileges are in themselves a wrong; and one wrong is not to be undone by attempting to offset it with another. But, even admitting the justice of corporation charters, the avowed purpose in granting them is to encourage co-operation, and thus stimulate industrial and commercial development for the benefit of the community. Now, to make this encouragement an excuse for its own nullification by a proportionate restriction of co-operation would be to add one more to those interminable imitations of the task of Sisyphus for which that stupid institution which we call the State has ever been notorious. Of somewhat the same nature, but rather more plausible at first blush, is the proposition to cripple the trusts by stripping them of those law-created privileges and monopolies which are conferred, not upon trusts as corporate bodies, but upon sundry individuals and interests, ostensibly for protection of the producer and inventor, but really for purposes of plunder, and which most trusts acquire in the process of merging the original capitals of their constituent members. I refer, of course, to tariffs, patents, and copyrights. Now, tariffs, patents, and copyrights either have their foundations in justice, or they have not their foundations in justice. If they have their foundations in justice, why should men guilty of nothing but a legitimate act of co-operation and partnership be punished therefore by having their just rights taken from them? If they have not their foundations in justice, why should men who refrain from co-operation be left in possession of unjust privileges that are denied to men who co-operate? If tariffs are unjust, they should not be levied at all. If patents and copyrights are unjust, they should not be granted to anyone whomsoever. But, if tariffs and patents and copyrights are just, they should be levied or granted in the interest of all who are entitled to their benefits from the viewpoint of the motives in which these privileges have their origin, and to make such levy or grant dependent upon any foreign motive, such, for instance, as willingness to refrain from co-operation, would be sheer impertinence. ...

[Link to media]

— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 23.

 

at 4/28/25 11:52pm

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 23.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: June 13, 1888Notes: Whole No. 127. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 29, 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 us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. A very lively quarrel is in progress among Australian radicals. Joseph Symes, the high priest of Free-thought at Melbourne, finding himself unable to “boss” the Anarchistic element so rapidly growing under the fostering care of David A. Andrade, is trying to expel it from the organization of the Secularists. His task is proving not altogether an easy one. Excluded from the columns of Symes’s paper, the “Liberator,” the Anarchists are conducting the fight through the “Australian Radical,” which is itself becoming more and more Anarchistic with each new issue. It is not often that Liberty’s interpretation of the principle of equal liberty receives legal sanction. But its application of that principle to the matter of boycotting now has the clear endorsement of the California courts. The following decision has recently been rendered by Judge Maguire of the supreme court, who therein shows a knowledge of the doctrine of individual sovereignty which would make Eastern judges envious if they were not dishonest: “If each and all have the right to bestow their patronage or employment, or sell their labor to whomsoever they will, to commence and discontinue at will, then it would be absurd to say that, while each and all have the individual right, they cannot exercise it collectively, for that would be to assert that the exercise of one lawful right is legal, but that the exercise of two lawful rights is illegal; that while one right will not constitute a wrong, two rights, or ten rights, or one hundred rights will constitute a wrong, increasing in illegality with the number of rights collectively exercised, which is the reductio ad absurdum of the position that a combination among workmen to do collectively that which each has the individual and unquestioned right to do separately constitutes an unlawful act or an unlawful conspiracy.” The London “Freedom” says that the American Mutualist papers, with the exception of the “Alarm,” “zealously repudiate all but passive resistance to oppression, and cling to the peace-at-all-costs doctrine of George Fox, Godwin, Shelley, Proudhon, and Leo Tolstoi.” The truth of this assertion cannot be tested unless “Freedom” will be good enough to define the doctrine concerning peace which it imagines these five men to hold in common. I am not sufficiently familiar with Godwin’s writings to speak positively of that author’s views, but I am certain that no American Mutualist paper accepts the non-resistant teachings of Fox and Tolstoi. And what Shelley is this that is sandwiched thus between these men? And what Proudhon? Surely not the Shelley who said to the Men of England: “Forge arms, in your defence to bear.” Surely not the Proudhon who wrote two large volumes on “War and Peace,” which, while a prophecy of peace, were at the same time a justification of war. Neither Shelley nor Proudhon preached peace-at-all-costs, nor do the American Mutualist papers. Liberty prefers peace to war only when it is less costly than war, and has never based its preference on any other ground. Before “Freedom” can intelligently criticise Individualistic Anarchism, it will have to make a further and closer study of it. Ibo. Translated from the French of Victor Hugo by B. R. Tucker. Written at the aolmen of Rozel, January, 1853. Say, why, within the soundless deeps       And walls of brass, Within the fearful gloom where sleeps       The sky of glass, Why, ’neath that sacred temple’s dome,       Dumb, vast retreat, Within the infinite as tomb       And winding-sheet, Imprison your eternal laws       And your bright lights? O truths! my wings will never pause       Below your heights. Why hide yourselves within the shade       To us confound? Gloom-compassed mankind why evade       By flight profound? Let evil break, let evil build,       Be high, be low, You know, O justice! I have willed,       To you I’ll go! O beauty! pure ideal that lives       In germ ’mid woe, That to the mind new firmness gives       And makes hearts grow, You know it, you whom I adore,       O reason, love! Who, like the rising sun, must soar       And shine above, Faith, girdled with a belt of stars,       The right, the true, O liberty! I’ll break my bars,       I’ll go to you! In boundless space in vain do you,       O gleams of God! Inhabit dismal depths of blue       By feet untrod. Accustomed to the gulf, my soul       Is undeterred; I have no fear of cloud or goal;       I am a bird. I am a bird of such a sort       As Amos dreamed, As sought Mark’s bedside and athwart       His vision gleamed, Who, ’twixt a pair of eagle’s wings,       ’Mid rays that rain, O’er neck and forehead proudly flings       A lion’s mane. Wings I possess. I soar on high;       My flight is sure; Wings I possess for lurid sky       And azure pure. Innumerable steps I climb;       I wish to know, Though knowledge be as dark as crime       And bitter woe! You surely know the soul dare try       The blackest hill; If I must mount, however high,       Then mount I will. You surely know the soul is strong       And fears nought, so The breath of God bears it along!       You surely know I’ll climb pilasters azure-crowned,       And that my feet, Once on the ladder starward bound,       Will ne’er retreat! Plunged in this troublous epoch, man,       To pierce the dark, Must imitate Prometheus’ plan,       And Adam’s mark. From austere heaven he must seize       A fiery rod; To his own mystery find the keys,       And plunder God. Within his hut, by tempests torn,       Man needs the sight Of some high law in which is borne       His strength and light. Forever ignorance and need!       In vain man’s flight, From Fate’s tight grip he’s never freed!       Forever night! The people now must overthrow       The stern decree, And martyred man at last must know       The mystery. Upon this dying era’s grim       Retiring trace Is sketched by love, in outline dim,       The future’s face. The laws of human destiny       By God are signed; And, though these laws mysterious be,       I have a mind. I am the man who stops nowhere       And never falls, The man prepared to go whene’er       Jehovah calls; I am the man to duty bound,       The poet austere, The breath of grief, the lips to sound       A clarion drear; The seer whose gloomy scroll records       Those living still, Whose music freights the winds with words       That bode but ill; The dreamer winged, the athlete bold       With sinewy arm. And I the comet’s tail could hold,       Secure from harm. To solve our problem and its laws       Then I engage; I’ll go to them, nor further pause,       Bewildered sage! Why try to hide these laws profound?       Your walls are glass. Your flames and waves begird no ground       But through I’ll pass; I’ll go to read the bible grand;       I, nude, alone. Will in the tabernacle stand       Of the unknown; Into the darkness I will dash,       The deep abyss O’er which the lurid lightnings flash       With jealous hiss. I’ll go to the celestial gate,       Nor stop before, And, thunders! growl at whate’er rate,       I’ll louder roar. ...

[Link to media]

— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 22.

 

at 4/28/25 4:44am

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 22.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: June 9, 1888Notes: Whole No. 126. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 28, 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 us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. Mr. Yarros’s review of George Gunton’s “Wealth and Progress,” begun in this number of Liberty, will continue through two more issues. E. C. Walker’s “Fair Play” has appeared. Instead of the eight-page fortnightly at fifty cents a year announced in the prospectus, it is a four-page weekly at seventy-five cents a year. Printed mainly from new type, it makes a much better appearance than “Lucifer.” I am agreeably disappointed in finding it less exclusively devoted to anti-Comstockism than I had supposed, from sundry articles in “Lucifer,” that it would be. On the contrary, it does vigorous battle against Authority all along the line. May it steadily grow in influence and circulation! M. D. Leahy, whose doubts on the subject of compulsory taxation J. Wm. Lloyd made a vigorous effort to dispel in the last number of Liberty, generously surrenders a large portion of his little paper, the “American Idea,” to a reproduction of Mr. Lloyd’s article. In his comments, however, he does not so much as touch a single one of Mr. Lloyd’s arguments. The upshot of his remarks is that he has not yet sufficiently examined the question and must have further time before announcing his position. Which is very fair: only, in my judgment, it should have been stated in something like the following direct and simple fashion: “Mr. Lloyd’s arguments seem to me unanswerable; otherwise I should try to answer them. On the other hand, there are difficulties which I am likewise unable to overcome. Therefore I must suspend judgment.” But, instead of such simplicity, Mr. Leahy gives his readers over a column of “fine writing,” which, though in no sense a reply, has the air of one, and sounds, as Ruskin wittily said of Mill’s definition of productive labor, “so very like complete and satisfactory information that one is ashamed, after getting it, to ask for any more.” Perhaps Mr. Leahy approaches nearest to argument when he expresses sympathy with Labadie’s statement that, “if the State would only remove those laws that stand in the way of free land, free money, and transportation, . . . . the laws for the punishment of crime would not need to be exercised.” Labadie is perfectly right, but Leahy errs if he understands him to assert that free land and free money would render compulsory taxation useless. The position of the Anarchists, as Mr. Lloyd clearly showed, is that the law establishing a compulsory tax is a law, not for the punishment, but for the commission, of crime, and is precisely the most potent of all those laws that stand in the way of free land and free money. The logic of Labadie’s statement classes the abolition of compulsory taxation as a means rather than a result. I have no doubt that Mr. Leahy will soon see this, for he has an open mind and sincerely desires the truth. The following sentences occur in an editorial in “Lucifer” written by Moses Harman: “In his criticism published two weeks ago the charge was made by Mr. Tucker, or at least such was the legitimate inference from his language, that I had treated Mr. Walker so unfairly as to drive him from ‘Lucifer.’ When he spoke of the ‘necessity’ of his (W’s) conduct in ‘practically disappearing from its columns as a writer,’ the only legitimate inference was that in some way the Junior had been so trammelled by me that he could not be heard through ‘Lucifer’s’ columns.” Then, if I were to say that I find myself under the “necessity” of going into the house when it rains, Mr. Harman would “legitimately infer,” I suppose, that I am forbidden to stay out doors. Must I inform that gentleman that necessity sometimes takes other forms than compulsion by arbitrary will,— often resulting, for instance, from the force of circumstances? The word necessity is generally used with reference to some end implied, and implied so clearly oftentimes that it would be an insult to the reader’s intelligence to specify it. When I speak of the “necessity of going into the house when it rains,” it is superfluous to add “in order to avoid getting wet,” unless I am talking to an idiot. Similarly, when I spoke of the “necessity” of Mr. Walker’s disappearance from “Lucifer’s” columns, it was superfluous, in view of the context, to add “in order to avoid the shame and humiliation of responsibility for the vacillating policy of a paper bearing his name as one of its editors.” That and nothing else is what I meant. But Mr. Harman chooses to “legitimately infer” that I meant to charge him with excluding Mr. Walker, and on the strength of this prints column after column of ludicrously absurd complaint against me. His especial grievance is that I refuse to reprint his stuff in Liberty, and so he begs such readers of Liberty as see “Lucifer” to send him the names of all other readers of Liberty in order that he may supply them with copies of “Lucifer” containing the explanation of the establishment of “Fair Play.” I hope to be the means of saving much trouble by notifying all readers of Liberty that the address of “Lucifer” is Valley Falls, Kansas. ...

[Link to media]

— Chuang, Canyu - Palestine and “Xinjiang” under Capitalist Rule

 

at 4/27/25 6:53pm

Author: Chuang, CanyuTitle: Palestine and “Xinjiang” under Capitalist RuleSubtitle: An Analysis from the Chinese LeftDate: July 16th, 2024Source: https://chuangcn.org/2024/07/palestine-and-xinjiang-under-capitalist-rule/ Below is our translation of an article by Canyu (惭语 “Shameful Words”). The author is a communist from mainland China who works with the cross-border network of internationalist activists whose collective piece “Against Pinkwashing: Sinophone Queers and Feminists for Palestine” we published in March. According to the author, this piece was written out of political concern, and they are not a professional researcher. Instead, Canyu hopes the article will contribute to the development of sympathy among “the Chinese pan-dissent community” for the conditions and struggles of both Palestinians and Uyghurs, and that it will also help to short-circuit the political frameworks of pro-Western Chinese liberals, on the one hand, and anti-Western Chinese nationalists, on the other, who normally position themselves in one “camp” against another when it comes to discussions of these two oppressed groups. Like the earlier piece produced by their collective, Canyu’s article offers valuable insights into a strong desire among Chinese comrades to extend the critique of Israel’s horrific war on Gaza to the PRC’s subjugation of Turkic Muslims. In this case, the author focuses on the way that both colonial states have controlled the labor of the colonized. We present this text as a way to better understand and support internationalist currents emerging from the Chinese left, and as a contribution to the ongoing wave of global resistance to the genocide in Gaza. In the spirit of comradely critique, we offer a few clarifications in this preface. First, while we support the sentiment of emphasizing commonalities between specific instances of oppression under the rule of capital, in this case the differences are also striking: The author’s focus on labor makes more sense for the PRC, whose colonial policies seem to have been partly organized around the goal of transforming Turkic Muslims into a disciplined workforce cut off from any cultural continuity with their histories of resistance. Israel, by contrast has shown less interest in the labor potential of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. Palestinians experience some of the highest unemployment rates in the world, which have hovered around 50 percent in Gaza for many years, and around 15 percent in the West Bank—where reliance on Palestinian labor has historically been more central to the colonial project. After October 7th, the 4th quarter 2023 unemployment rates in Gaza jumped to an unprecedented 75%. By contrast, unemployment in Xinjiang is relatively low, and increases in unemployment are used as a pretext for proactively shipping off ethnic minority populations across the country in jobs programs. While Canyu’s comparison makes more sense for the West Bank, Israel’s treatment of Gaza would be better understood as an extreme example of the “surplus population”: the portion of the proletariat rendered unnecessary for capitalist needs, thereby becoming not an object of potential exploitation, but merely a problem to be managed—whether through abandonment, incarceration or murder.[1] Secondly, while the article emphasizes China’s use of re-education camps, or what the state has infamously called “vocational training facilities,” these sites have largely been converted or shut down since 2019, as the state shifted strategies in its latest policy permutation. This is not to say that the situation has improved for Turkic Muslims. Many of the “training facilities” were merely converted into ordinary prisons. For those inmates who were released rather than formally becoming prisoners, the state has continued a policy of labor transfer under the guise of poverty alleviation campaigns, relocating Uyghur labor to factories across the country.[2] Meanwhile, the PRC recently moved to “normalize counterterrorism,” a shift that will likely further institutionalize the subjugated position of Turkic Muslims in Chinese society. There is currently no Israeli equivalent to the “training facilities” that became so notorious in Xinjiang. Instead, the Israeli state sees itself faced with a massive, unemployed, war-ravaged population often portrayed as sub-human, and has never posed any strategy for incorporating this population into its national workforce. Instead, it is currently planning to place Gazans in cordoned off “bubbles” while it continues its military campaign in other parts of the Strip. In addition, while the author mentions Israel-China security relations in passing, here we would like to highlight that China and Israel have a long history of cooperation on “counterterrorism,” directed at Palestinians, Uyghurs, and the broader population. For example, China publicly sought out Israeli counterterrorism experts at the height of its crackdown in 2014. Similarly, China has invested billions of dollars in Israel’s high-tech sector and has served as the country’s second largest trading partner in recent years (behind the United States). To this day, China’s Hikvision cameras aid in the mass surveillance of Palestinians and others in Israeli society. ...

[Link to media]

— Chuang, Khun Heinn, Sinophone Palestine Solidarity Action Network, Progressive Muslim Youth Association - “We are the Palestinians of Burma”

 

at 4/27/25 5:34pm

Author: Chuang, Khun Heinn, Sinophone Palestine Solidarity Action Network, Progressive Muslim Youth AssociationTitle: “We are the Palestinians of Burma”Subtitle: Interview with the Progressive Muslim Youth AssociationDate: April 21st, 2025Source: https://chuangcn.org/2025/04/we-are-the-palestinians-of-burma/ We are pleased to share this translation of an interview with Khun Heinn, a participant in the ongoing Spring Revolution and co-founder of the Progressive Muslim Youth Association (PMYA). The interview was conducted by a member of the transnational Sinophone Palestine Solidarity Action Network (PSAN) last month, during a meeting in Thailand, then collated, translated into Chinese and published with an introduction on the PSAN Substack.[1] Khun Heinn is a Muslim from Yangon currently living in exile in Thailand. Burma[2] is home to multiple Muslim communities from several different ethnic groups, but all have been designated by political authorities (including not only the junta but also the liberal National League for Democracy) from the majority Buddhist Bamar as kalar (a racial slur meaning “people from the West”), thus not deserving of rights within Burma’s federal community. Khun Heinn identifies politically as “libertarian communist,” but the PMYA is more broadly left and predominantly social democrat, with a mission of building bridges between the Burmese revolution and the Palestinian struggle, as explained in the interview. The PSAN describes itself as “a group of Sinophone activists organizing across multiple continents. We are working on educating our communities on Palestinian resistance and the global solidarity movement, as well as calling attention to China’s complicity in Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and war crimes against Palestinian people.” Their other writings and activities can be found on their Substack and Instagram. For more stories about the experiences of Burmese revolutionaries and Muslims living in Thailand, see “Dispatches from Mae Sot” in the forthcoming inaugural issue of Heatwave magazine. For background on the persecution of Muslims in Burma, see “Three Theses on the Crisis in Rakhine,” and on the 2021 coup and subsequent revolution, “Until the End of the World” and “Unhappy is the Land That Needs Heroes,” all by Geoffrey Rathgeb Aung. For more English translations of Chinese texts on Palestine, see “Against Pinkwashing” and “Palestine and Xinjiang under Capitalist Rule.” PSAN’s Introduction It has been over four years since the military coup in Burma on February 1, 2021. Were it not for the devastating earthquake that recently struck, Burma would have been all but forgotten by the international community. Yet, throughout these four years, resistance has never ceased. The non-violent “Civil Disobedience Movement” was brutally suppressed by the military shortly after the coup—protesters were arrested, tortured, and killed. Subsequently, some responded to the call of the National Unity Government (NUG) in exile by fleeing into the jungles to form the People’s Defense Force (PDF), joining forces with ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in guerrilla warfare. Others fled to other countries, Thailand being the first stop for many of them. Over the past few decades, Muslims from Burma have migrated to the Thai border town of Mae Sot, contributing to the formation of a transnational Muslim trading network—one that also includes Thai and Pakistani Muslims. Later, several waves of anti-Muslim riots and systematic persecution within Burma have driven many other Muslim migrants across the border. Mae Sot [official population 50,000, but with an estimated 100,000 migrants from Burma] thus hosts a large Muslim population [estimated 5 to 10 percent of the total] whose lingua franca is Burmese. Muslim-owned shops are everywhere, and it’s not strange to see people on the streets wearing keffiyehs there, despite the town’s distance from major cities. Many in this long-established Muslim community are passionate about the Palestine cause but remain largely indifferent to Burma’s revolution, seeing it as a conflict between the military regime and the Bamar majority—irrelevant to their lives. Since the 2021 coup, Mae Sot has also become a haven for those involved in the resistance movement who have been blacklisted by the military and can no longer leave the country legally. Among them are Muslim revolutionaries, some of whom occasionally manage to find work at Muslim-run trading companies in the area. After the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, I witnessed how the distant issue of Palestine mirrored the complex ethnic ecology of Burma. The exiled communities quickly descended into anxiety and division. Muslim revolutionaries reported that they were seeing Islamophobic sentiments resurface among exiled Bamar revolutionaries within their own circles. After the 2021 coup, many Bamar dissidents had expressed remorse toward the Rohingya, regretting their previous silence during the oppression of the most persecuted Muslim group in Burma. But now, to the dismay of Muslim revolutionaries, some Bamar comrades had started echoing Israeli narratives, accusing Muslims of being terrorists. Disillusionment spread among many Muslim revolutionaries: they began to believe that the expressions of regret by Bamar dissidents after the coup were merely performances for the international stage. The revolution, they said, remained Bamar-centric. Another layer of mistrust took root: perhaps Burma’s ethno-nationalist politics had only been temporarily patched over by the coup and the revolution. Would Islamophobia and Bamar chauvinism resurface in a post-revolutionary Burma? ...

[Link to media]

— Cathy Reisenwitz - Thick And Thin Libertarianism And Tom Woods

 

at 4/27/25 2:30pm

Author: Cathy ReisenwitzTitle: Thick And Thin Libertarianism And Tom WoodsDate: December 21st, 2013Source: Retrieved 04/27/2025 from c4ss.org On his blog, libertarian bestselling author and Ron Paul homeschooling curriculum writer Tom Woods has written some thoughts about thin and thick libertarianism and how they apply to the Duck Dynasty controversy. If you’ve been living in a cave, the star of reality television show Duck Dynasty said some unfortunate things about gay people and some really unfortunate things about black people living in the Jim Crow South to GQ magazine. The remarks were homophobic and racist, and he was suspended from his show by A&E. Somehow Woods ties this to thick libertarianism, and uses it as a jumping off point to critique a movement he dislikes. First, he describes and takes issue with thick libertarianism. “Some libertarians say the traditional libertarian principle of nonaggression is insufficient.” He says, “If [people] support nonaggression, they are libertarians.” The position thick libertarians take on the non-aggression principle is that it’s a starting place, not a place to end. The trouble with it is that there are multiple ways to define aggression. As Jason Brennan points out, “What counts as aggression depends upon what rights people have.” Woods then defines thick libertarianism as requiring people to “have left-liberal views on religion, sexual morality, feminism, etc., because reactionary beliefs among the public are also threats to liberty.” More accurately, thick libertarianism asks people to oppose racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry because bigotry against some is a threat to liberty for all. If Woods disagrees with this idea, it’s not clear how or why. Speaking of the way thick libertarians see social views that aren’t “left-liberal,” Woods asks, “Why is it only the traditional moral ideas of the bourgeoisie that are supposed to be so threatening?” I didn’t realize the racism, sexism and homophobia thick libertarians critique were the traditional moral ideas of the bourgeoisie. I think it’s more realistic to say, and polling data bears this out, that these kind of socially illiberal attitudes are much more prevalent among the poorly educated than whoever Woods describes as “bourgeoisie.” While it’s difficult to survey for racism, as most racists don’t self-identify as such, survey data has shown lower IQ scores are associated with not being able to agree with statements such as “I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races.” There’s actually a strong positive correlation between education and approval of interracial marriage. One survey and another study found a negative correlation between parental income and homophobia. But whether they are bourgeois or uneducated has zero bearing on whether they’re threats to liberty. Again, it would be great for Woods to get into whether or not bigotry constitutes a threat to liberty. I would argue that denying someone goods or services on the basis of their sex, gender, orientation, religion, etc. is a curtailment of their liberty, at the very least to enjoy those goods and services. That does not justify legally forcing someone to stop discriminating. However, it does justify calling out the pernicious effects of discrimination. That, in essence, is thick libertarianism. It’s concerned with both kinds of threats to freedom, government-created and cultural. And it proposes voluntary solutions, like education, or reality television show suspensions, to those threats.

[Link to media]

— Alexandre Christoyannopoulos - Tolstoy the peculiar Christian anarchist

 

at 4/27/25 11:25am

Author: Alexandre ChristoyannopoulosTitle: Tolstoy the peculiar Christian anarchistDate: 2006Source: Retrieved on April 27, 2025 from https://archive.org/details/TolstoyThePeculiarChristianAnarchist/mode/1up Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. Leo Tolstoy Even for a Christian anarchist, Leo Tolstoy’s reading of the Bible was unusual. When he ‘converted’ to Christianity near his 50th birthday, he did not embrace the orthodox Christianity of the traditional church. For him, Jesus was no ‘son of God’, nor did he perform any supernatural miracles. Tolstoy was convinced that these superstitious stories in the Bible had been added by the church in order to keep ‘Christians’ hypnotised enough to ensure that they did not question the unjustifiable compromise that the church had reached with the state. He was convinced that an honest and full application of Christianity could only lead to a stateless and churchless society, and that all those who argued the contrary were devious hypocrites. Conversion to Christianity Tolstoy was born in a wealthy, aristocratic family in 1828. In the 1950s, he gradually established himself as a respected novel writer. His two most famous works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, were written between 1863 and 1869 and between 1873 and 1877 respectively. In 1869, however, Tolstoy’s life started to change. During a trip to a distant Russian province, he underwent an agonising experience of human mortality. In the middle of the night, he was seized by a sense of futility of all endeavours given that death could be the only ultimate outcome. It was not death itself that horrified him, but the fact that life seemed to have no meaning if death was guaranteed to follow. This experience haunted him ever more forcefully over the next ten years. As he explains in A Confession, he increasingly restlessly sought the meaning of life in the great thinkers of science, religion and philosophy – all in vain. Nowhere could he find anything that gave meaning and value to life. He even contemplated suicide. Then came the breakthrough. He observed that the peasants around him – which as a proud aristocrat he had hitherto overlooked – seemed to approach death with calm and serenity. But why? What was it that helped them remain so serene in the face of the apparent futility of life? Tolstoy realised that what they had was ‘faith’. This intrigued Tolstoy, yet it also gave him hope. So he plunged into the Bible with renewed enthusiasm, in the hope that the meaning of life would finally be disclosed to him – and this time, it was. The Sermon on the Mount This revelation came to him suddenly, as he reflected on one specific and famous passage of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This passage, Tolstoy declares in What I Believe, at once unlocked the whole meaning of the Bible, and with this his existential anxiety at last came to rest. These all-important words are in Matthew 5:38–42, and in the King James Version read as follows: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away For Tolstoy, the implications of these instructions were nothing short of revolutionary. Jesus was proposing a new, radical and wiser method for human beings to respond to any form of ‘evil’. That is, when coerced or when treated unjustly, do not retaliate, but respond with love, forgiveness and generosity. Tolstoy reflected on Jesus’ advice and observed that mankind has always been caught in a vicious cycle of tit-for-tat evil and violence. Human beings constantly try to resist evil with evil, to deal violently with problems of violence, to wage war to preclude another war. But such responses succeed only in spreading bitterness, anger and resentment – and all that this guarantees is further evil and suffering further down the line. The only remedy to this vicious cycle of violence, Tolstoy now realised, was to juxtapose to it the virtuous cycle of love so well articulated by Jesus. The destructive cycle of evil, anger and revenge can only be overpowered by a patient cycle of love, forgiveness and sacrifice. Turning the other cheek does mean more suffering in the short term, but the hope is that eventually, the evildoer will repent and change his ways. Just as violence is contagious, so, too, is love. Yet as Tolstoy understood, this means that one must forego the desire to force others to behave in a certain way. There cannot be any difference between means and ends: violence breeds further violence, and only love can eventually bring about a society bound by charity, peace and love. And love can only be taught by example. This requires courage, because even when persecuted unjustly, the follower of Christ must patiently love and forgive – even, that is, when the ultimate price to pay is death (or crucifixion!). ...

[Link to media]

— Ted Grimsrud - Does the Bible teach anarchism?

 

at 4/26/25 10:57am

Author: Ted GrimsrudTitle: Does the Bible teach anarchism?Date: 2014Source: Retrieved on April 26, 2025 from https://thinkingpacifism.net/2014/08/25/does-the-bible-teach-anarchism/#:~:text=The%20exodus%20story%20tells%20of,not%20structural%20kind%20of%20authority. I first learned about anarchism back in the 1970s. My wife Kathleen and I got involved with an activist group opposed to Jimmy Carter’s decision to reinstate registration for the draft in order to “show resolve” to the Soviet Union (this is one of the darker aspects of Carter’s presidential legacy—a cynical but failed attempt to hold off the political threat from the right that remains thirty-some years later an important element in the socialization of young people into our national security state). We met a young couple, Karl and Linda, who had just moved to our hometown, Eugene, Oregon, to be part of the rising anarchist movement there. I had typical superficial stereotypes of anarchists as mindless terrorists (it was an “anarchist,” after all, who had shot President McKinley). I was disabused of that superficial antipathy in conversations with Karl and Linda and also in seeing their lives. They were compassionate, committed to social justice, and (Linda, at least) thoroughly nonviolent. They were pretty negative about Christianity, but were interested to learn to know about our Anabaptist convictions. About the same time, I took a class on the history of political theory at the University of Oregon—and the professor treated anarchism as a serious political philosophy that needed to be considered alongside the other more mainstream approaches. It might have been as part of that class the I read George Woodcock’s fascinating book, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. I have not traveled very far down the anarchist path in these past decades, but I have remained interested in and sympathetic toward this political orientation. Writers such as James C. Scott, Noam Chomsky, and Rebecca Solnit, whose anarchistically-inclined books I have read for reasons other than direct articulation of anarchism, have kept my interest alive. And then, when I learned about the Jesus Radicals website and movement, I started to realize that there was some genuine compatibility between the evolving political perspective I have been constructing and at some articulations of anarchism. Anarchism and the Bible One of the new ideas for me has been to think that perhaps we could say that anarchistic sensibilities (in our present day sense of what those involve) are embedded in the biblical story from start to finish. I want in this post to begin to sketch an argument to support this idea. For the sake of this conversation, let’s define “anarchism” as (1) the belief in living without a centralized state and (2) the belief in organizing society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion. The term “anarchism” for a political philosophy based on these ideas only arose sometime during the 19th century. It has gotten a pretty negative reputation because of being associated with revolutionary violence in the service of actually overthrowing the state. However, many of anarchism’s most important thinkers, while not as a rule thoroughgoing pacifists, have not been advocates of widespread violence. Because of anarchism’s recent emergence as a discrete political theology, it would be highly anachronistic to see the Bible as overtly teaching it. However, my sense is that if we use a looser definition of anarchism and focus on the positive—a view of political life that is not state centered and that understands human life as best organized in decentralized, non-coercive ways—we might be able to discern anarchistic tendencies in the Bible. At least this is my hypothesis. To begin to test the hypothesis, I will simply list a number of biblical themes that support the idea that the Bible’s politics has quite a bit in common with at least some elements of anarchist thought. I will focus on the general storyline of the Bible more than on proof texts or direct commands in testing this notion. Starting with Genesis We may start with the creation story in Genesis 1–3. It is notable, in contrast with other ancient near eastern creation stories, that the picture here does not valorize a human king as the center of human life at its beginning. Nor are conflict and violence at the heart of things. The picture is quite egalitarian—“male and female”—and the human beings are pictured as God’s partners with the vocation to relate to one another and the rest of creation in cooperative, peaceable ways. “It was good” is a statement about what appears to be a harmonious, mutually respectful, and creative environment. Human beings are powerful and responsible. What follows in Genesis, then, is a story of brokenness and destruction, followed by a new creative effort by God to call into being a community that will witness to God’s peace and continue the vocation present in the original creation of “blessing all the families of the earth” (Gen 12). Though there is a kind of “fall” that happens when Eve and Adam eat the forbidden fruit, human begins ultimately remain as God’s partners with the task of serving God in creative work. And this work, again, does not require a centralized state and human power elite. ...

[Link to media]

— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 21.

 

at 4/26/25 7:05am

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 21.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: May 26, 1888Notes: Whole No. 125. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 26, 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 us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. For an article compact with original, suggestive, valuable, and lofty ideas on one of the most delicate of questions, read Zelm’s “Reply to Victor” on the sixth and seventh pages. Just before we go to press the capitalistic papers bring the news that the “Alarm” is to be revived in New York with financial backing, and that it will be conducted by Henry London, John Most, and Dyer D. Lum. This is interesting, to say the least. B. F. Underwood, editor until recently of the “Open Court,” has been engaged as the editor of the Chicago “Illustrated Graphic News.” It is to be hoped that he will exclude from its columns such slanderous references to Anarchists as were lately made by him in the columns of the Boston “Investigator.” My recent complimentary notice of E. C. Walker’s forthcoming fortnightly, “Fair Play,” made Moses Harman, editor of “Lucifer,” so boiling mad that he dumped the whole of it into a department of his paper which he calls “Spirit of the Opposition,” along with Talmage and other pietists. Really, Mr. Harman, a man of your age ought to have better control of his passions. “All taxation is an evil,” says Speaker Carlisle. Now, when greenhorns talk to you about the blessings of government and the beauties of law and order, point out to them that this man, who certainly is more competent than they to pronounce judgment, since he has long been and still is in the business, completely knocks them out. If government is a necessary and serviceable institution, then there is nothing to complain about in the expense of running it. Taxation is an evil because government is a farce and a snare. Hereafter the “Workmen’s Advocate,” the organ of the Socialistic Labor Party, will be published in New York, from the office of the German organ of the party. It is to be hoped that the change of external surroundings will be accompanied by an improvement in the tone and quality of the editorial mouthings. The paper has been too shallow and stupid even for a place as small as New Haven, and Liberty is anxious to meet an “Advocate” of Socialism with whom it would be refreshing to occasionally exchange a word or two. It is inconvenient to have to go for intelligence and originality to the London Socialistic market. A New Jersey court has decided that the will of a citizen of that State, by which Henry George was given a large sum of money for the circulation of his books, is invalid on the ground that the bequest is not educational or charitable, but intended for the spread of doctrines contrary to the law of the land. Probably the judge who rendered this decision thinks regarding the determination of economic truth, as Mr. George thinks regarding the issue of money, the collection of rents, the carrying of letters, the running of railroads, and sundry other things, that it is “naturally a function of government.” And really, if Mr. George is right, I do not see why the judge is not right. Yet I agree that Mr. George has correctly branded him as an “immortal ass.” Judson Grenell of Detroit edits the “Advance,” and he is so Communistic that he directs his compositors to throw the type into their cases regardless of the compartments in which the various letters respectively belong, which probably accounts for the following extraordinary statement in the “Advance” of May 19: “Benjamin Tucker of Boston edits Liberty, and he is so indiviualistic [sic] that the little [sic] of the paper, though in scrip [sic] type, has a space between the letters, so that each one stands alone.” If Judson Grenell were more individualistic, he would know how to spell that word, would be able to distinguish between little and title, and would not confound script with scrip or an artist’s taste with a crank’s whim. (Should this paragraph lead any one to accuse me of triviality in criticism, no defence will be attempted.) The State Socialists are forever citing the efficiency of the postal service as a sample of the superiority of governmental over private enterprise. Yet here comes the Fort Worth “South West,” a paper very much given over to State Socialistic doctrines, and says that a reduction of the rate of postage is of less importance now than an increase in the efficiency of the service, which, “through mistaken economy, has been lowered to an inexcusable extent.” Until the State Socialists can agree that the post office is well managed, they had better look in some other direction for a pattern of public administration. First and last I have a good deal to do with the United States postal department, and I have seen enough to satisfy me that, were I to take the time necessary for a thorough investigation of its workings, I could show it to be a most stupidly and wofully mismanaged concern. The death-rate among the labor and liberal journals has reached an appalling figure during the past month or two. In all directions the ground is covered with the dead and dying. First, the Winsted “Press” passed in its checks in Connecticut. Then the “Alarm” gave up the ghost in Illinois. At the same time the tidings came from London that the “Anarchist” was in a state of suspended animation, though with a prospect of resumption. And now I must announce that the London “Radical” has gasped for possibly its last breath, the Denver “Labor Enquirer” has “risen,” as the Spiritualists say, and the San Francisco “People” is in its grave. What manner of pestilence is this that is stalking abroad, decimating our ranks? Let us pray that Boston may not lie in its fated path. But if it should, let those who shall be left behind us sing as we do now: ...

[Link to media]

— Comrade Motopu - Dirtbag’s nostalgia for the old working class

 

at 4/26/25 12:52am

Author: Comrade MotopuTitle: Dirtbag’s nostalgia for the old working classSubtitle: Comrade Motopu finds class fetishism over class analysis in Amber Frost’s 2024 book Dirtbag.Date: January 15th, 2025Source: https://libcom.org/article/dirtbags-nostalgia-old-working-class This is a book about a millennial socialist’s ridiculous adventures in left politics, and what happened when I threw all my weight behind an unlikely insurgent left-wing presidential campaign. Sounds good to a publisher, but it’s hardly reinventing the wheel. Hunter S. Thompson’s 1973 book Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 obviously beat me to that one. —Amber Frost, Dirtbag Amber A’Lee Frost’s Dirtbag could be described as a Gonzo memoir. She herself calls it an “ADHD gonzo bricolage.” What that means as far as street cred is negligible these days. I’m looking at my copy of Fear And Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 and remembering the forward was written by Matt Taibbi. Since then, he became an employee of Elon Musk, a twitter files curator, and boilerplate ex-Left anti-woke contrarian. He’s a good representative for the crowd that seems to see themselves as the heirs to Thompson’s legacy. Gonzo is a devalued social currency. Beneath the coopting of Gonzo style there’s Amber Frost’s actual politics. Basically she wants to bring back the New Deal era labor/capital compact that saw higher wages, job security, and benefits like healthcare and pensions. To do this, the focus has to be organizing the industrial labor force to engage in point of production challenges and using industrial choke points to shut down production and distribution to attack capitalists. But that necessitates creating millions of new manufacturing jobs. Frost has become known as the mean class-reductionist lady and I might agree if I thought she was serious about class analysis. Dirtbag is about class fetishism, specifically her fantasies about the industrial working class, part happy worker smurf, part “Yes Chad.” Frost has such a romanticized ideal of industrial workers that any suggestion to prioritize organizing other sectors sends her into attack mode. It’s not just that she believes that blue collar workers confronting capitalists at the point of production is a vital part of organizing. Plenty of trade unionists and labor activists think that. It’s that she is not even willing to admit there has been a decline in industrial jobs and manufacturing in the U.S. She insists manufacturing doesn’t need to “come back” because it never really left. She throws up a FRED chart showing “All Employees, Manufacturing” noting the number of manufacturing jobs was fluctuating but that it didn’t necessarily signify steady decline: In 2019, it was at a dismal 12.817 million, but it’s important to note that the decline itself hasn’t been a steady descent. There was minor growth in 1984, and again from 1988 to 1989, and a relatively steady increase from 1993 to 1998 to levels commensurate with the low dips of the 1970s, and often with levels above—sometimes considerably above—that supposedly golden era of manufacturing from the 1950s to the mid-1960s. Here’s her chart: But here’s a couple of other charts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that jobs in manufacturing, mining and logging, construction, trade-transport and utilities all declined steadily from 1950 to 2020 as a percentage of total US jobs. So it’s not just the number of jobs, but the percent of total US jobs that tells us about the decline. And another represenation: To examine her class fetishizing, I’ll focus on her tirades against historian Gabriel Winant and trade union reformer Eddy Sadlowski below and briefly explain how her industrial dream points to the productivist ideology of the influencer and scholar crew she rolls with. First, a bit of background about Frost from section one of her book. Introducing Herself Frost sets up her backstory in the first section of Dirtbag, “Indiana.” It starts with her as the child of a single mom struggling with poverty, constant moves to new towns, early jobs, high school, punk rock, confronting a bully, and then her entrance into labor organizing and defending women’s reproductive rights. We see the formation of her class centered politics, and her tenacious personality from an early age. Part II covers her move to New York City, organizing with the Working Families Party and DSA, encountering Occupy Wall Street and eventually hooking up with Chapo Trap House and becoming a Left fringe celebrity and political influencer. It’s implied that Chapo Trap House became her main and steady source of income though I don’t know what her net worth is at this point. The third section focuses on her dedication to the second Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, which most of her other work ended up being channelled into in 2019. We get it, you’re working class To me, her class war routine comes off as a bit forced at times. I’m for the class struggle and abolishing class. It’s just that Frost lays it on so thick and so constantly, turn to any page, that she ends up sounding like a spy for the Campus Republicans going undercover for reconnaissance on the Left. I know she’s not, but there’s so much stuff like this: “Liberals want to like the workers, but they fundamentally perceive them as wild animals; thus, they can only find them sympathetic when they are domesticated, endangered, or—even better—extinct.” ...

[Link to media]

— Iain Mckay - Review: The Altruism Equation

 

at 4/25/25 6:00pm

Author: Iain MckayTitle: Review: The Altruism EquationDate: August 15, 2024Source: https://anarchism.pageabode.com/review-the-altruism-equation/ , Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250211190028/https://anarchism.pageabode.com/review-the-altruism-equation/ A review of a book on evolutionary theory and altruism which discusses Kropotkin. Unfortunately, as shown, the account of Kropotkin’s ideas is flawed and so both “mutual aid” and his contribution to science are obscured. Lee Alan Dugatkin, The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) Since Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) the explanation of various aspects of animal and human life have been discussed, namely co-operation, altruism and ethics. The predominant image from Darwin’s masterpiece was one of individual competition and this made all these apparently difficult to explain. Darwin himself discussed the issue in Descent of Man (1871) but to little apparent effect. Darwin’s principle British advocate, Thomas Henry Huxley, expounded the notion that evolution and ethics were unrelated (indeed, in opposition) in 1888 based on the individualistic perspective of Origin with nature portrayed as “red in tooth and claw”. This essay, as any well-read anarchist will know, inspired Kropotkin to write the articles which later became Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) which effectively refuted Huxley’s assertions. Since then, Kropotkin’s name sometimes appears in books and articles on animal co-operation yet given how pioneering his work on mutual aid and ethics was, this lack of acknowledgement is disappointing but, given the caricature all-too-often presented of Mutual Aid and his anarchism in general, perhaps unsurprising. Lee Alan Dugatkin’s The Altruism Equation is an example of this kind of work. The book discusses the life and work of seven scientists who wrote on “altruism” including Kropotkin, Warder Clyde Allee and William David Hamiliton (who produced the “altruism equation” of the book’s title) before expanding upon the subsequent developments in science this work has produced, ably summarising recent research on altruism and cooperation. Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist and animal behaviourist, is well-placed to give a good account of Kropotkin’s ideas and how they have faired but sadly does not. Although the book is well written and engaging, it is fundamentally flawed. The flaws are three-fold. First, it makes some dubious assumptions on cooperation (the best that can be said is that it reflects some, but not all, scientific perspectives). Second, it is non-political in the worse sense of the word insofar as it does not question the assumptions of the society Dugatkin lives in. Third, it misunderstands Kropotkin’s arguments. All three are related, as would be expected. The third flaw is the most serious for the major problem with Dugatkin’s argument is that mutual aid (co-operation) is equated to altruism, something Kropotkin never did but which the reader is not informed of. Indeed, Kropotkin rarely used the term “altruism” in his writings and Mutual Aid was no exception. He does talk of “love” (which could be considered as similar) but only to dismiss the notion that mutual aid has anything to do with it. Mutual aid, as he repeatedly stressed, was a product of the struggle for existence. He also – from the book’s sub-title onwards – stressed it was a “a factor of evolution” and never denied the existence of “selfish” behaviour nor mutual struggle. Indeed, his account of human history is marked by a conflict between co-operative and competitive tendencies as reflected in class struggle. The picture that Dugatkin paints, whether intentionally or not, is very much at odds with Kropotkin’s own position and arguments. We are informed that Kropotkin “sees altruism at every turn in nature” (13) and although he rightly notes Kropotkin’s place in “the Russian school” and its recognition of “mutual aid” within animal life, he conflates “altruism and cooperation”. (23) This can be seen when he asserts that “Kropotkin’s ‘mutual aid’ was a catch-all phrase for what we would now call altruism”. (41) This becomes caricature when he claims that for Kropotkin “kindness and altruism prevailed in the animal world”. (32) In reality, Kropotkin was well aware that the animal world (including humanity) was one of struggle and he explicitly rejected the notion attributed to him by Dugatkin: “But it may be remarked at once that Huxley’s view of nature had as little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love, peace, and harmony destroyed by the accession of man. In fact ... the first observation upon any animal society ... cannot but set the naturalist thinking about the part taken by social life in the life of animals, and prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but a field of slaughter, just as this would prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but harmony and peace. Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the beak-and-claw fight from his thoughts; and Huxley committed the opposite error; but neither Rousseau’s optimism nor Huxley’s pessimism can be accepted as an impartial interpretation of nature.” ...

[Link to media]

— James F. Morton Jr. - The Curse of Race Prejudice

 

at 4/25/25 1:09pm

Author: James F. Morton Jr.Title: The Curse of Race PrejudiceDate: 1906Source: Retrieved on April 25, 2025, from https://www.louisecrowleylibrary.org/the-curse-of-race-prejudice INTRODUCTORY. “Of the word I have spoken, I except none; red, white, black, all are deific; In each house is the ovum; it comes forth after a thousand years.” Walt Whitman: Faces. The present pamphlet, while largely based on a lecture delivered under the same title in the Alhambra Theater in New York City, will be found to differ from it in some material respects. The special aim of that address, while keeping in view the fundamental principles as herein set forth, was to voice an earnest protest against the anti-Semitic outrages in Russia, and to point out the fact that these horrors, which have caused the whole civilized world to stand aghast, are but the logical result of the cultivation of racial antipathies. In this argument, most of the illustrations are drawn from nearer home, and especially from the manifestations of Negrophobia which are the peculiar disgrace of our own country. This is not because the Negro is a race apart, demanding special consideration. The writer has no extraordinary predilection for this particular race, and is in no way fanatical on the subject. A protest against Negrophobia is by no means a eulogy of Negromania. These pages are simply the result of a deeply rooted conviction, founded on no small degree of study, investigation, experience and close intermingling with members of almost every conceivable race, under manifold conditions, that the spirit of racial separateness, merging swiftly into race arrogance and race hatred, is not merely indefensible in the extremest degree in its cruel injustice to weaker or less developed races, but a blighting curse to the dominant race itself; and that a highly advanced civilization is maintainable only on condition of weeding out from the minds of its constituent members every trace of this debasing mental poison. To all fair-minded people, the arguments in support of this thesis are respectfully commended. It is a poor cause that dares not face the light. No matter how positive our convictions, the wisest of us falls many degrees short of infallibility ; and new light from any source is always to be welcomed by the honest searcher for truth—to whom alone these pages are dedicated. An attempt will be made to rest the contention entirely on the basis of reason, avoiding mere appeals to passion, and restraining within as narrow limits as possible, even the expression of legitimate indignation at recorded outrages on human rights. The reader is urged to take nothing for granted, and to reject any assertions that are not abundantly confirmed by fact and logic. Let us reason together, with an eye single to the discovery of truth. Among the purposes of this treatise, especial attention may be called to the effort which will be made to examine the essential characteristics of the human frailty known as race prejudice, and to trace it at least roughly to its origin; to indicate its influence in the decay of nations, and its deteriorating effect on individuals: to exhibit its fruits, as betraying the character of the tree whence they spring; to appeal to common sense against the bogey-worship which manifests itself in puerile fears and acts of worse than childish folly; to face squarely all the current attempts to defend or palliate this great evil, and to meet every ostensible argument in behalf of race prejudice by an overwhelming refutation; and to establish the fundamental conditions of human progress, and point out their irreconcilability with an indulgence in so demoralizing a superstition. All this is undertaken with the best of good will toward those who hold an opposite point of view, and in the hope that some, at least, of them may prove open to conviction. The writer has no animosity toward the South, in spite of the necessity of pointing out some unpleasant consequences of its prevailing sentiment, which is created by the nature of the argument. The question is not one of sections, but of principles. To the honor of the South, many of her noblest and most thoughtful sons and daughters, in spite of the difficulty of resisting the pressure of an adverse public opinion, are rapidly becoming emancipated from the crude prejudices of an earlier epoch, and are coming to recognize the broader claims of humanity. The Vardamans, Tillmans and Watsons [1] are rapidly becoming repudiated by those who know them best; and to assume that such as these represent the new South, or, a fortiori, to brand the South of the future with the record of these dishonored names, were a gratuitous and wanton insult. No such injustice will here be inflicted on the honorable men and women who are gradually lifting the whole of the fair South into a progressive civilization worthy of the manifold blessings with which nature has so lavishly endowed her. But it is the truest friendship to point out the destruction which lies at the end of the path of error, and to utter an earnest warning against the disastrous consequences of honest delusion. Frankness is not hostility; and the flatterer of a people’s vices is not its best friend. The Vardamans and the murderous lynching mobs do not stand as effects without a cause. If the disease is to he cured, it must be carefully studied, even though some painful probing of an old sore may thereby become necessary. To the dishonor of the North, she cannot escape responsibility; nor has she ground for proudly drawing her skirts about her, and exclaiming: “I am holier than thou.” Race riots and lynchings of the most fiendish type have of late years been portentously frequent north of Mason and Dixon’s line. The shameful Chinophohia of the Pacific slope is too well known to be disputed; while an anti-Semitism, less virulent in its manifestations, but no less irrational and contemptible in its essence, is disgracefully common in our northern cities. The issue is not between South and North, or between Russia and the rest of the world. It is between decay and progress in social life. The person whose opinions are based solely on the current sentiment of his birthplace or domicile is but a poor specimen of humanity. There is not one truth for Massachusetts and another for South Carolina. The people of Georgia are subject to the same arithmetical rules as those of Ohio; nor is astronomy one thing in New York and a very different science in Virginia. Similarly, sociological and ethical principles are not determinable along geographical lines; and only the shallowest and most servile of reasoners can imagine that “loyalty” to their native state or section requires that they shut their eyes to universal truth, and accept blindly any prejudices or superstitions which may be prevalent in the particular locality. To such only as combine intelligence and independence of thought with honesty of purpose, can the following pages be expected to appeal. ...

[Link to media]

— Jeff Shantz, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review - The Salish Sea Anarcha Network

 

at 4/25/25 10:49am

Author: Jeff Shantz, Anarcho-Syndicalist ReviewTitle: The Salish Sea Anarcha NetworkDate: 2024Source: https://liberteouvriere.com/2025/04/17/the-salish-sea-anarcha-network-jeff-shantz-canada-2024/ (Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #90) Over the past year there has been something of a revival of anarcho-syndicalist theory and practice in so-called Canada. This is reflected in organizing and publishing projects coming out of Montreal (Liberté Ouvrière and the Anarchist Union Journal) that have already made significant contributions to innovative anarcho-syndicalist thinking on issues such as land back movements, anti-imperialism and class-wide solidarity. Closer to home, for me, has been the formation of the Salish Sea Anarcha Network (SSAN), which has brought together syndicalists across unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (which make up the city of Vancouver); Katzie, Kwantlen and Semiahma (Surrey); and the Kwikwetlem Nations (Coquitlam) — which together make up so-called Metro Vancouver — with connections on Vancouver Island. I have participated in the SSAN from the start and have been involved in organizing the network and its various public events over the course of the last year. ln what follows I offer an overview of some early work and interviews with SSAN participants. We go over a range of issues such as the relevance and need of anarcho-syndicalism today, goals and challenges, shortcomings in local anarchist organizing, and aims for ongoing organizing work. Along the way they provide analysis of important contemporary issues like relationships with the land, centering Indigenous solidarity, and developing green syndicalist practice — all in a context where active anarcho-syndicalist organizing has largely been absent for a long time. « Get to Know Us »: Initial Events The first event was a general introduction to anarcho-syndicalism which was perhaps surprisingly well attended with several dozen people filling the local infoshop Spartacus Books. Discussion ranged over issues including green syndicalism, working class solidarity with Indigenous resistance, class struggle strategies and tactics, dock workers’ struggles and Palestine solidarity. There was particular interest in syndicalist squads and organizing we can do here and now to support and advance working class struggles locally, including solidarity with unemployed and unhoused working-class people. The second event, similarly well attended, was a film screening and discussion of the documentary « Defenders of the Land. » The documentary focused on the Gustafsen Lake struggle of 1995 in Secwepemc people practicing their Sun Dance were to a mass police raid by the RCMP acting on behalf of an American cattle rancher. The police assault saw the RCMP lay incendiary devices on a road, blowing up a pickup truck driven by Indigenous people trying to get supplies. Over 70,000 rounds were fired by the RCMP into the Sun Dance camp. The film was unique in having been granted access for direct interviews with the land defenders. Discussion focused on ongoing and contemporary state violence against Indigenous land defenders, extractive capital on unceded Indigenous territories in so-called British Columbia, and practices of solidarity. Connections were made between the Gustafsen Lake struggle and current land struggles on Wet’suwet’en territory against the Coastal Gaz link fracked gas pipeline and on Secwepemc territory against the Trans-Mountain tar sands pipeline. In addition to venues for necessary discussions on a range of important matters, the events were organized as friendly opportunities for folks to get to know members of the network. The discussions were held in a conversational style with short introductions rather than full, formal, panel presentations. Why This, Why Now? I had a chat with some SSAN participants to get their thoughts on organizing a contemporary anarcho-syndicalist network, and key challenges, aims and aspirations. SSAN members come from different working-class backgrounds. Some are members of unions. A couple are members of the Industrial Workers of the World. Some work in larger workplaces, at least one does personal care work. Ages range over decades apart. Some are longtime anarchists while others are more recent to anarchist politics. Those in the conversation included Skyler, a younger anarchist, PJ, a longtime anarchist organizer and IWW member, and Chris, an electrical worker and member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The first question was, straightforwardly, « Why is the network necessary? Especially in this area? » For Skyler: « It’s necessary to have this network as no other group is really like it around here. Closest is the IWW, however it’s not anarchist even it has a bunch of them in it, and currently I feel is on the path to bureaucratic reformism due to it not having any political leaning making it vulnerable to such things. PJ is more optimistic about the IWW. In her view, « The IWW has lots of good ideas, and 100 years of fairly decent organizing efforts around Turtle Island, attempted internationally. Their OT101 (Organizer Training 101) is exceptionally useful to anyone wanting to end their isolation and get organizing in their workplace, but these tried-and-true methods can also handily be applied in tenant organizing too. » ...

[Link to media]

— Alexandre Christoyannopoulos - A Christian Anarchist Critique of Violence

 

at 4/25/25 10:36am

Author: Alexandre ChristoyannopoulosTitle: A Christian Anarchist Critique of ViolenceSubtitle: From Turning the Other Cheek to a Rejection of the StateDate: 2010Notes: Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is seen by many Christians as a moving summary of his message to the community of Christian disciples. For Christian anarchist thinkers like Tolstoy, Ellul, Elliott, and Andrews among others, it also contains Jesus’ most poignant statement on violence – his call to turn the other cheek – a statement which, they argue, cannot but ultimately imply a condemnation of the state for its theoretical and practical monopoly over the allegedly legitimate use of violence. This paper offers an overview of this radical political exegesis, thus showing why, for Christian anarchists, the very core of Christianity cannot but imply a form of (non-violent) anarchism.Source: Retrieved on April 25, 2025 from https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/chapter/A_Christian_anarchist_critique_of_violence_From_turning_the_other_cheek_to_a_rejection_of_the_state/9469943/1?file=17094155 1. Introduction ‘What a fine place this world would be,’ a Christian anarchist quipped decades ago, ‘if Fundamentalist Protestants tried to exemplify the Sermon on the Mount.’[1] There are, however, divergent interpretations of this Sermon – including perhaps its most famous passage, where Jesus speaks of love and non-resistance. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the anarchist interpretation of Christianity by summarising the scattered comments Christian anarchists have made on this particular passage. Space restrictions prevent a more detailed analysis of these comments here, but precisely such a detailed analysis, along with that of other passages (including Romans 13 and ‘render unto Caesar’) as well as more in depth exposition and discussion of Christian anarchism more generally, can be found in Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. The passage in question here is where Jesus says: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.[2] 2. Jesus’ Three Illustrations In the first illustration, both Wink and Elliott suggest, Jesus is depicting a situation which his followers would immediately recognise as humiliating, and which, in that society, would consequently call for an appropriate, equally forceful and humiliating response to uphold one’s dignity. The response Jesus recommends, however, goes against these local expectations. For Elliott, Jesus is saying: ‘do what your attacker least expects: behave in the opposite way.’[3] This, Elliott contends, confuses the attacker, who now ‘is no longer in control of the process he initiated. He is, in a very real sense, disarmed!’[4] Similarly, Wink claims that turning the other cheek ‘robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate.’[5] Both Elliott and Wink therefore agree that Jesus’ surprising response in this first illustration disempowers the attacker and forces him to regard the victim in a different light. Elliott and Wink develop a similar analysis from the other two responses illustrated by Jesus. The second, they argue, would unmask and put the blame on the social and legal system which brought this about, such that Jesus’ recommendation would again be ‘a practical, strategic measure for empowering the oppressed.’[6] As to the third, they agree that Jesus’ suggested response is ‘a way of subverting authority’ in that ‘the victim is claiming the power to determine for himself the lengths to which he is prepared to go.’[7] Jesus’ illustrations of non-resistance imply a critique of the expectations of his contemporary society and seek to empower the victim through a counter-intuitive response. 3. A Purposeful Reaction At the same time, Jesus’ non-resistance is not just a completely inactive, uncaring acceptance of evil, but rather a very specific, strategic response. However, views diverge among Christian anarchists as to exactly what kind of action is allowed and what kind of resistance is forbidden: resistance to certain types of evil, resistance by evil, or any resistance at all. These important disagreements are discussed in detail elsewhere.[8] Wink, for instance, maintains that a ‘proper translation’ of the Greek word for ‘resist’ shows that Jesus was rejecting passive ‘flight’ or violent ‘fight’ and recommending ‘militant nonviolence.’ Ballou, similarly, argues that while Jesus is proscribing violent resistance, evil should still be resisted – just never with evil means. Tolstoy, however, sometimes appears to disagree – but his own position is unclear. At times, he interprets Jesus’ recommended reply as not admitting any form of resistance at all, yet sometimes Tolstoy seems to imply that only violent resistance is being forbidden. Either way, the point to note here is that although there may be disagreement among Christian anarchists and pacifists about exactly what form of reaction is allowed by these verses, they all (Tolstoy included) insist that the Christian response is a very real and radical (non-violent) reaction – a form of action, a genuine, purposeful, tactical reaction. 4. Beyond Lex Talionis This radical response implies a disapproval of something about his political context, namely: the cycle of violence inherent in lex talionis, the law of retaliation enshrined in the Old Testament. First, however, it is worth noting that lex talionis is not a licence for unlimited violence. Rather, the idea behind it is justifiable or fair retaliation. Equally important, however, is how this ‘fair’ and ‘just’ level of retaliation can be used as a basis for reaching an alternative solution: a ‘fair’ and ‘just’ level of compensation. Lex talionis therefore provides the basis for either retributive (punitive) orrestorative (compensatory) justice – principles which also permeate contemporary civil and criminal law. ...

[Link to media]

— Larry Gambone - Cosmic Dialectics

 

at 4/25/25 12:42am

Author: Larry GamboneTitle: Cosmic DialecticsSubtitle: The Libertarian Philosophy of Joseph DietzgenDate: 2010Source: Extracted from "The Nature of Human Brain Work: An Introduction to Dialectics" by Joseph Dietzgen, PM Press 2010 Thinking About Thinking Dietzgen began by asking the question, “What happens when we think?” He observed that the basic thinking process was essentially the same whether done by the greatest scientist or a common person. For “the simplest conception, or any idea for that matter, is of the same general nature as the most perfect understanding . . . Thought is work.” [1] By showing the common basis of thought, Dietzgen democratized science and philosophy. The belief that every person’s opinion must be valued and that thinking must not be especially reserved for an intellectual elite puts him at variance with both academia and Marxist specialists in revolution. “The knowledge and study of this theory cannot be left to any particular guild . . . general thought is a public matter which everyone should be required to attend to himself.” [2] But what happens when we think? What is the innate process that underlies thought, whether thinking about plowing a fi eld, contemplating the cosmos or just plain day-dreaming? Thought requires the formation of concepts about the world, a process which involves two differing aspects: By means of thought we become aware of all things in a twofold manner, outside in reality and inside in thought . . . Our brain does not assimilate the things themselves, but only their images. The imagined tree is only a general tree. The real tree is different from any other. And although I may have the picture of some special tree in my head, yet the real tree is still different from its conception as the specific is different from the general. [3] One must not make the mistake of confusing one’s mental pictures of the world with reality itself. The real, existing thing is not exactly like the generalization which is formed in the mind. “What abstract thing, being, existence, generality is there that is not manifold in its sense manifestations, and individually different from all other things? There are no two drops of water alike.” [4] Thought is a process of forming generalizations out of specific incidences or specific things. Th inking involves the specific and individual things of the world and our generalizations about them. Thought involves generalization. The common feature of all separate thought processes consists in their seeking the general character or unity which is common to all objects experienced in their manifold variety. [5] But generalization isn’t all we do when we think, nor is it without inherent problems. If we take our generalizations to an extreme, we can easily get lost in what are essentially our own mental constructions. We trap ourselves by thinking our productions are reality. This is what happens to people who get caught up in extreme religious or political cults. To bring ourselves back down to reality, it is necessary to never forget the individual and specific aspects of things. Mere generalization is one-sided and leads to fantastical dreams. By this method one can transform anything into everything. It is necessary to supplement generalization by specialization . . . the general must be conceived in its relation to its specific forms, and these forms in their universal interconnection. [6] Contradiction Inherent in Thought Thought is a process which involves a relationship between two opposing aspects: the aspect of generalization and the aspect of specialization. To think means to always be engaged in a contradictory process. For consciousness generalizes differences and differentiates generalities. Contradiction is innate in consciousness and its nature is so contradictory that it is at the same time a differentiating, a generalizing and an understanding nature. Consciousness . . . recognizes that all nature, all being, lives in contradictions, that everything is what it is only in co-operating with its opposite. [7] As with generalization, here is a trap we must avoid. One can get so caught up in the contradictions confronting us that it becomes impossible to make decisions. However, it is possible to achieve some sort of balance or synthesis between opposite views and the contradictions can, at least in part, be overcome. Reason develops its understanding out of contradictions. It is in the nature of mind to perceive . . . the nature of things by their semblance, and their semblance by their nature . . . or in other words to compare the contrasts of the world with one and other, to harmonize them. [8] The Limitations of Our Knowledge It should be obvious by now, that this contradictory process of generalization or concept formation gives us only a limited understanding of the world. That ten people witnessing a traffic accident might have ten different versions of what happened is perfectly understandable. What we are doing is forming our concepts about the world through our thinking processes, resulting in a viewpoint which approximates reality, but is not reality itself. Hence, and this should be engraved on stone in letters two feet high, there is no perfect knowledge or truth. ...

[Link to media]

— Arnold Schroder - Do Not Worship the Deities That Came Before the Fire

 

at 4/24/25 4:06pm

Author: Arnold SchroderTitle: Do Not Worship the Deities That Came Before the FireDate: 29th April, 2019Source: Retrieved on 25th April, 2025 from https://dark-mountain.net/do-not-worship-the-deities-that-came-before-the-fire/ When civil rights icon and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson rode a spotted horse toward the burning barricades on North Dakota State Highway 1806, I finally started coming to terms with the end of the world. Naturally, I already knew that epochal transformation was underway from, say, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, the extinction rate, or a cursory assessment of human behaviour. But the end of the world is inherently mythological, as is the human mind. We are creatures as hopelessly bound to our narratives as we are bound to our sexuality and our fear of snakes. Jesse Jackson, the burning tires and burning sage, the tear gas and acoustic weapons and rocket launchers, the drumming and the war songs – the moment only seemed plausible if one imagined it had been described in prophecy, and the prophecy subsequently forgotten. It was a sufficiently mythological stimulus to provoke a conclusion which can be concisely characterised as: We are living in the story of the end of the world. This was somehow more palpable and psychologically meaningful than: We are living at the end of the world, or the more understated and strictly accurate: We are witnessing a cataclysm without precedent. The fires people set that day, 26th October, 2016, in an effort to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, were extinguished by the next night. Dreamlike encounters with celebrity were fairly common at Standing Rock – the Green Party presidential candidate arrives to spray paint bulldozers people are locked to, the guy who plays the Incredible Hulk in the movies wanders past your camp – and, leaving the barricades as he approached, I didn’t even see Jesse Jackson. I just knew he was mounted on a horse a mile down the road, preparing to approach, and the mental image of it, in that warlike context, immediately took on a quality roughly akin to a many-armed deity wielding skulls and weapons, crowned by fire. It produced a decisive rupture from whatever semblance of the former world I was still clinging to. Less concisely than: We are living in the story of the end of the world, the moment said: The world we live in now will exist in relation to the old one as a dream to waking, as an unhinged hallucination to everyday consciousness, and whoever clings to the prosaic forms and conventions of the former world will be devoured by the new gods and monsters that are being birthed in its flames. Two years later, the impression seems justified. Clinging to the prosaic forms and conventions of the former world, people with respectable opinions occupied themselves, during the time we battled the pipeline, with dismissing a reality television star as irrelevant – until that night, 12 nights after police extinguished the fires, when he was elected president of the United States. It is not a trivial detail that this decisive, bodily sense of global change occurred in the presence of fire. Scientists and environmentalists have been refining their language of unprecedented suffering and intergenerational catastrophe for decades, and every instance of such communication – if the criterion for success is that one could walk down a street somewhere and it would feel like a social response of any kind was occurring, even one of mere acknowledgment – has failed. Some of the reasons for this are very immediate, rooted in the vicissitudes of current and recent politics and culture, but some of the reasons are fundamental, rooted in the human minds’ intrinsic barriers to comprehending and functionally integrating the reality of collapse. Witnessing the fiery transformation of the highway into a battleground between what felt like mythical forces that day, I realised that on some level, despite years of avid engagement in climate science and having given up on any semblance of a normal life to fight the fossil fuel industry full-time, I too was subject to these intrinsic psychological barriers to comprehending something so vast; I was in denial about climate change. The political, strategic form of climate denial, rejecting that it’s happening at all, has somewhat monopolised the term denial, so that we can no longer talk about it in a more common psychological sense, in the sense that we simply don’t process information that is too challenging. This can be observed in the ability of the human mind to completely suppress recollections of traumatic events, and it can be observed in non-human minds, in the dazed look that sometimes comes over prey animals’ eyes when they stop fighting with a predator and mentally depart from the experience of dying. My fiery revelation convinced me that, for most people most of the time, whatever our worldviews, global collapse is simply beyond our emotional and psychological scope, if it is presented in non-mythic terms. The moment of psychological integration I experienced didn’t occur because I was explicitly processing anguish over a doomed food system or an ocean populated only by plastic. I’d been doing those things for years. It occurred because I had a religious experience; and I didn’t have a religious experience because I was seeking one, but because of fire. ...

[Link to media]

— Julian Langer - The Hands of Shorleigh Woods

 

at 4/24/25 3:01am

Author: Julian LangerTitle: The Hands of Shorleigh WoodsDate: 24/4/2025Source: https://ecorevoltblog.wordpress.com/2025/04/24/the-hands-of-shorleigh-woods/ Part 1 What could be said of the annihilation of the woods called Shorleigh Woods, situated in the North Devon countryside a short distance from the Tor River, could do little to articulate the horror and the grief of its murder. To those who had loved the woods that had been home to many animals of the ground and air, as well as habitat for bluebells, garlic, oak, redwoods, and had held within its body a glorious ancient badger sett, was the carnage of a war zone, genocidal in its oblivion. Barren absence filled the space where there had been living presence. Where there’d been an orchestra of wild song, silence was what could be heard. The devastation was truly unspeakable, with all words failing to convey the horror. The felling of trees in the woods had happened with locals believing that this was limited to those ash trees that had the disease dieback, and those other ash trees close to them, to lessen the spread of illness — a sad but understandable situation. But this is not what had happened. The felling had not been limited in this way. The felling had not been done to attend to that disease. The annihilation had been totalising. A haunted terrain left where it stood, terrible to behold. The ghosts of the woods and all those a part of it, with the coldness of death, clung to the space. Folks who walked or drove along the road that used to be darkened by the tree cover now bore witness to the devastation. Those who walked through the woods or lived there now carried a wound, agonising and terrible. Part 2 In a field that was close to where the edge of Shorleigh Woods and the ancient and active badger sett had been, a crow landed and looked at the strange scene that was happening before their eyes. From the air they had watched a young deer approaching the area where the ancient badger sett had been and put their nose close to the ground. Curiosity had inspired the crow to land for a closer look. But no sooner than when they landed the fawn ran off, as if someone had startled them. At first the crow was confused as to what had alarmed the youngster. It could not have been the crow that had scared them, as the fawn was not so young as to still be frightened by birds who they could easily chase away. There had been no loud noises or any other animals that the crow had seen. But moments later they saw the monstrous and grotesque sight that had inspired the fawn to run away. From where the badger sett had been, all manner of hands emerging from the ruined ground. At first these dirt covered hands appeared to be those of buried humans, for they were of the look of human hands, with all the fingers and thumbs that are the norm for humans. But it didn’t take long for it to be plain that this was not the case and that these were not human hands. The hands that emerged from the earth before the crow’s eyes were not attached to any human body, moving independently in a manner akin to that of spiders. They crawled out from the ground as a sickeningly foul sight, like vile witchcraft. As more and more arose, the crow became more and more horrified by their presence, and took flight to keep away from the hands. From the air, the crow watched them continue to emerge from the ground, like spiders or ants, with fingers moving like legs and the hands clambering over each other in their desperation to move. When the crow had landed on one of the few remaining trees in the area, they spotted that the hands were moving in all directions and not just one way, suggesting that there was not one single purpose for their arrival. Where they were going or what they would do when they got there was mysteries that the crow could not say with certainty. Instinct suggested to the crow that there was a definite connection to the annihilation of the woods and the arrival of these revolting hands. Perhaps they went to seek out revenge for the decimation that lay before them, or to wait in other woods close by and attack anyone who would do harm, or something else entirely, cruel and terrible. All things were possible and no answers could be given. It was impossible to ask them, as hands have no mouths to speak answers to the question “what is it that you are doing?”. So the crow watched. After a long period, so long that the evening had turned to night and shadows were now cast by the cool dark light of the moon and stars, long after the first hands had pulled themselves out from the ground, covered in dirt and filth, the last hand crawled off towards an unknowable destination. Those hands born of a wretched birth out of the earth, from the unspeakable catastrophic annihilation, were now so far spread out and out of sight that the crow had no way of telling where they were — and it was not long before this final hand disappeared from sight and into the shadows. After a brief moment of investigation, the crow went off from this scene in flight, crying out for days for all to hear what they had seen emerge from the ground. Part 3 Many days later, in woods a short distance away from where the hands had crawled out from and from where Shorleigh woods had been, the crow spotted someone walking through the trees. This person, who had been seen walking through Shorleigh woods by those who lived there on a great many occasions, came up to where there was a moss covered tree trunk that had fallen in the wind, a couple of metres away from the stream that ran between the trees, and began to write. Now writing held no value for the crow and seemed a most stupid of activities to engage in. More than this though, a terrible fear surged through the crow, longing to be expressed, for one or any number of those hands might have made their way to these woods, and might try to strangle this writer, or enact a great many other possible violent acts. The crow, having no desire to see this writer killed by those revolting creatures, cried out for the writer to stand up and walk on, cawing and cawing repeatedly to no avail, unable to see if any hands were waiting to strike. They could be anywhere, but the writer did not seem listen to the crow, who feared attempting to chase them away, as it might anger the hands. On and on the cawing continued, with the crow desperately trying to warn the stupid writer, who only paused their ridiculous activity to look around at the ferns, mosses, trees and flowers. ...

[Link to media]

— Sheldon Richman - In Praise of “Thick” Libertarianism

 

at 4/23/25 7:04pm

Author: Sheldon RichmanTitle: In Praise of “Thick” LibertarianismDate: April 4th, 2014Source: Retrieved 04/23/2025 from c4ss.org I continue to have trouble believing that the libertarian philosophy is concerned only with the proper and improper uses of force. According to this view, the philosophy sets out a prohibition on the initiation of force and otherwise has nothing to say about anything else. (Fraud is conceived as an indirect form of force because, say, a deceptive seller obtains money from a buyer on terms other than those to which the buyer agreed.) How can libertarianism be concerned with nothing but force? This view has been dubbed “thin libertarianism” by Charles W. Johnson, and it strikes me as very thin indeed. (Jeffrey Tucker calls it “libertarian brutalism”; his article explains this perhaps startling term.) As I see it, the libertarian view is necessarily associated with certain underlying values, and this association seems entirely natural. I can kick a rock, but not a person. What is it about persons that makes it improper for me to kick them (unless it’s in self-defense)? Frankly, I don’t see how to answer that question without reference to some fundamental ideas. Different libertarians will have different answers, but each will appeal to some underlying value. Let’s get specific. Are there distinctly libertarian grounds for disapproving of racist conduct that does not involve the use of force? Some libertarians say no. They might hasten to add that while libertarians, as human beings, ought to disapprove of racism, they cannot do so as libertarians, because their political philosophy only speaks to the proper and improper uses of force. On the other hand, libertarians often quote Ayn Rand on the issue, even if they wouldn’t quote her on much else: Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. The freedom philosophy is intimately related to ethical, political, and methodological individualism. Therefore, the philosophy should be expected to detest any kind of collectivism — and particularly its “lowest, most crudely primitive form” — even in its nonviolent manifestations. To put it more concretely, if a libertarian observed a growing propensity to embrace (nonviolent) racism, that person, qua libertarian, ought to be concerned. Why? Because that attitude and resulting conduct can be expected to eat away at the values conducive to libertarianism. It’s the same sort of reason that a libertarian would be concerned by, say, a growing acceptance of Keynesian ideas, even though merely holding and advocating those ideas does not require the use of force. It is true that carrying out Keynesian ideas requires the use of force (taxation, monopoly central banking, and state “socialization of investment”), while one can imagine a racist society in which no force is used. But although a society of racist pacifists is not a logical impossibility, it strikes me as highly unlikely. In its denial of dignity to individuals merely by virtue of their membership in a racial group, there is a potential for violence implicit in racism that is too strong for libertarians to ignore. As I’ve written elsewhere, A libertarian who holds his or her philosophy out of a conviction that all men and women are (or should be) equal in authority and thus none may subordinate another against his or her will (the most common justification) — that libertarian would naturally object to even nonviolent forms of subordination. Racism is just such a form (though not the only one), since existentially it entails at least an obligatory humiliating deference by members of one racial group to members of the dominant racial group. (The obligatory deference need not always be enforced by physical coercion.) Seeing fellow human beings locked into a servile role — even if that role is not explicitly maintained by force — properly, reflexively summons in libertarians an urge to object. (I’m reminded of what H. L. Mencken said when asked what he thought of slavery: “I don’t like slavery because I don’t like slaves.”) But it doesn’t end there. I can think of another reason for libertarians to be concerned about racism, namely, it all too easily metamorphoses from subtle intimidation into outright violence. Even in a culture where racial “places” have long been established by custom and require no coercive enforcement, members of a rising generation will sooner or later defiantly reject their assigned place and demand equality of authority. What happens then? It takes little imagination to envision members of the dominant race — even if they have professed a “thin” libertarianism to that point — turning to physical force to protect their “way of life.” So I’m puzzled by the pushback whenever someone explicitly associates the libertarian philosophy with values like tolerance and inclusion. We don’t care only about force and its improper uses. We care about individual persons. So we properly have concerns about any preferences that tend to erode the principle that initiating force is wrong. ...

[Link to media]

— Jeffrey A. Tucker - Against Libertarian Brutalism

 

at 4/23/25 7:04pm

Author: Jeffrey A. TuckerTitle: Against Libertarian BrutalismSource: Retrieved 04/23/2025 from web.archive.org Why should we favor human liberty over a social order ruled by power? In providing the answer, I would suggest that libertarians can generally be divided into two camps: humanitarians and brutalists. The humanitarians are drawn to reasons such as the following. Liberty allows peaceful human cooperation. It inspires the creative service of others. It keeps violence at bay. It allows for capital formation and prosperity. It protects human rights of all against invasion. It allows human associations of all sorts to flourish on their own terms. It socializes people with rewards toward getting along rather than tearing each other apart, and leads to a world in which people are valued as ends in themselves rather than fodder in the central plan. We know all of this from history and experience. These are all great reasons to love liberty. But they are not the only reasons that people support liberty. There is a segment of the population of self-described libertarians—described here as brutalists—who find all the above rather boring, broad, and excessively humanitarian. To them, what’s impressive about liberty is that it allows people to assert their individual preferences, to form homogeneous tribes, to work out their biases in action, to ostracize people based on “politically incorrect” standards, to hate to their heart’s content so long as no violence is used as a means, to shout down people based on their demographics or political opinions, to be openly racist and sexist, to exclude and isolate and be generally malcontented with modernity, and to reject civil standards of values and etiquette in favor of antisocial norms. These two impulses are radically different. The first values the social peace that emerges from freedom, while the second values the freedom to reject cooperation in favor of gut-level prejudice. The first wants to reduce the role of power and privilege in the world, while the second wants the freedom to assert power and privilege within the strict confines of private property rights and the freedom to disassociate. To be sure, liberty does allow both the humanitarian and the brutalist perspective, as implausible as that might seem. Liberty is large and expansive and asserts no particular social end as the one and only way. Within the framework of liberty, there is the freedom to love and to hate. At the same time, they constitute very different ways of looking at the world—one liberal in the classical sense and one illiberal in every sense—and it is good to consider that before you, as a libertarian, find yourself allied with people who are missing the main point of the liberal idea. Humanitarianism we understand. It seeks the well-being of the human person and the flourishing of society in all its complexity. Libertarian humanitarianism sees the best means to achieve this as the self-ordering social system itself, unimpeded by external controls through the violent means of the State. The goal here is essentially benevolent, and the means by which it is achieved put a premium on social peace, free association, mutually beneficial exchange, the organic development of institutions, and the beauty of life itself. What is brutalism? The term is mostly associated with an architectural style of the 1950s through the 1970s, one that emphasized large concrete structures unrefined by concerns over style and grace. Inelegance is its main thrust and its primary source of pride. Brutalism heralded the lack of pretense and the raw practicality of the building’s use. The building was supposed to be strong not pretty, aggressive not fussy, imposing and not subtle. Brutalism in architecture was an affectation, one that emerged from a theory robbed of context. It was a style adopted with conscious precision. It believed it was forcing us to look at unadorned realities, an apparatus barren of distractions, in order to make a didactic point. This point was not only aesthetic but also ethical: It rejected beauty on principle. To beautify is to compromise, distract, and ruin the purity of the cause. It follows that brutalism rejected the need for commercial appeal and discarded issues of presentation and marketing; these issues, in the brutalist framework, shield our eyes from the radical core. Brutalism asserted that a building should be no more and no less than what it is supposed to be in order to fulfill its function. It asserted the right to be ugly, which is precisely why the style was most popular among governments around the world, and why brutalist forms are today seen as eyesores all over the world. We look back and wonder where these monstrosities came from, and we are amazed to discover that they were born of a theory that rejected beauty, presentation, and adornment as a matter of principle. The architects imagined that they were showing us something we would otherwise be reluctant to face. You can only really appreciate the results of brutalism, however, if you have already bought into the theory and believe in it. Otherwise, absent the extremist and fundamentalist ideology, the building comes across as terrifying and threatening. ...

[Link to media]

— Charles Johnson - Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin

 

at 4/23/25 6:39pm

Author: Charles JohnsonTitle: Libertarianism Through Thick and ThinDate: July 1st, 2008Source: Retrieved 04/23/2025 from c4ss.org To what extent should libertarians concern themselves with social commitments, practices, projects, or movements that seek social outcomes beyond, or other than, the standard libertarian commitment to expanding the scope of freedom from government coercion? Clearly, a consistent and principled libertarian cannot support efforts or beliefs that are contrary to libertarian principles — such as efforts to engineer social outcomes by means of government intervention. But if coercive laws have been taken off the table, then what should libertarians say about other religious, philosophical, social, or cultural commitments that pursue their ends through noncoercive means, such as targeted moral agitation, mass education, artistic or literary propaganda, charity, mutual aid, public praise, ridicule, social ostracism, targeted boycotts, social investing, slowdowns and strikes in a particular shop, general strikes, or other forms of solidarity and coordinated action? Which social movements should they oppose, which should they support, and toward which should they counsel indifference? And how do we tell the difference? In other words, should libertarianism be seen as a “thin” commitment, which can be happily joined to absolutely any set of values and projects, “so long as it is peaceful,” or is it better to treat it as one strand among others in a “thick” bundle of intertwined social commitments? Such disputes are often intimately connected with other disputes concerning the specifics of libertarian rights theory or class analysis and the mechanisms of social power. To grasp what’s at stake, it will be necessary to make the question more precise and to tease out the distinctions among some of the different possible relationships between libertarianism and “thicker” bundles of social, cultural, religious, or philosophical commitments, which might recommend integrating the two on some level or another. The forms of “thickness” I am about to discuss should not be confused with two other kinds of commitments, one tightly and one loosely connected to libertarianism: those logically entailed by the philosophy itself (what I call “thickness in entailment”), such as opposition to private aggression, and those that relate simply to being a good person (“thickness in conjunction”), such as being a loving parent. As an example of the first category, it might be argued that libertarians ought to actively oppose certain traditional cultural practices that involve the systematic use of violence against peaceful people — such as East African customs of forcing clitoridectomy on unwilling girls or the American and European custom of judges and juries ignoring the facts and the law to acquit or reduce the sentence for men who murdered unfaithful wives or their lovers. Principled libertarianism logically entails criticism of these social and cultural practices for the same reason that it entails criticism of government intervention: because the nonaggression principle condemns any violence against individual rights to life, liberty, and property, regardless of who commits it, and not just forms that are officially practiced by government. Between the tightest and the loosest possible connections, at least four other kinds of connections might exist between libertarianism and further social commitments, offering a number of important, but subtly distinct, avenues for thick libertarian analysis and criticism. Thickness for Application First, there might be some commitments that a libertarian can reject without formally contradicting the nonaggression principle, but which she cannot reject without in fact interfering with its proper application. Principles beyond libertarianism alone may be necessary for determining where my rights end and yours begin, or for stripping away conceptual blinders that prevent certain violations of liberty from being recognized as such. Consider the way in which garden-variety political collectivism prevents many nonlibertarians from even recognizing taxation or legislation by a democratic government as being forms of coercion in the first place. (After all, didn’t “we” consent to it?) Or, perhaps more controversially, think of the feminist criticism of the traditional division between the “private” and the “political” sphere, and of those who divide the spheres in such a way that pervasive, systemic violence and coercion within families turn out to be justified, or excused, or simply ignored as something “private” and therefore less than a serious form of violent oppression. If feminists are right about the way in which sexist political theories protect or excuse systematic violence against women, there is an important sense in which libertarians, because they are libertarians, should also be feminists. Importantly, the commitments that libertarians need to have here aren’t just applications of general libertarian principle to a special case; the argument calls in resources other than the nonaggression principle to determine just where and how the principle is properly applied. Thus the thickness called for is thicker than logical entailment, but the cash value of the thick commitments is the direct contribution they make toward the complete application of the nonaggression principle. ...

[Link to media]

— Séamus Malekafzali - Israel's Exports of Violence

 

at 4/23/25 2:22pm

Author: Séamus MalekafzaliTitle: Israel's Exports of ViolenceSubtitle: Israel's genocidal war in Gaza does not affect Gaza alone. If oppressive states all over the world see unity in their cause, those who oppose them should see unity in their own cause as well.Date: April 23rd, 2025Source: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/p/on-israels-exports-of-violence These remarks have been adapted from a talk with the Palestine Working Group at Columbia University on April 15. I don’t mean to speak as if I am ancient, but when I was in college, there was a perception that left-wingers, socialists, and communists, were mixing together all these different causes, foreign and domestic, economic and social, that ultimately meant nothing to each other. At worst, they were spouting off incoherent nonsense about an “omnicause”, if that phrase was in common parlance then. How can it be that this issue of tuition is in any way related to Native Americans in the student body, how can you seriously argue that such-and-such donation box shows the administration’s blindness to Western interventions abroad, and so on and so on and so on? Newspaper opinion pages love this sort of thing, college presidents enjoy using it as a cudgel against student protestors, and when strategy is being discussed on campus, it may be difficult and thorny to navigate these debates and to decide where priorities should lie. When it comes to the issue of something as present and severe as what is happening to the Gaza Strip, the lines that are being drawn by those in the streets between Palestine and other nations suffering under the heel of oppression and conflict are not far apart at all, not in the slightest. Students are not just demanding these issues be brought to the forefront, they are being forced to by governments and their own university administrations who seek to make an example of them. The Israelis who are pushing for these crackdowns and celebrating as students here are arrested, imprisoned, and deported despite their legal status and their rights, are not solely seeking control over the narrative in the United States, or the temperature of the rhetoric in the United Kingdom. Israel is seeking to place its thumbs on the scale of governments, societies, and most critically conflicts, all around the world, to make its influence undeniable, and to make avoiding interaction with it, as many Arab states tried to do in decades past, impossible. The bombs that rain down in Shuja’iyya, and the ethnic cleansing that is occurring right now in Rafah, have consequences that stretch beyond its borders, both to the benefit and the chagrin of the Israeli politicians and arms dealers who are responsible. Inevitably, whenever we discuss Gaza and the war being waged against it, we are confronted with the argument: “What does this have to do with me? It’s on the other side of the world, two countries duking it out. It’s none of my business.” To begin with, on a basic level, how could this not be your business? We, as Americans, pay our taxes to a state that then uses that money to send arms to the country that is enacting this catastrophe. It is by definition something you are related to. Your dollars went to funding this venture, one way or another. You have the ability to pressure your representatives to speak up about it because they retain the power to halt that funding. You have the ability to vote in other leaders because they hold the executive authority to tell Israel to stop its ventures. The United States holds powers that very few, if any, countries in the world have, which is that Israel listens to the White House and almost always the White House alone. When even the late leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, says that it is a myth that Israel controls America, that in fact America controls Israel, you understand how accepted this notion is among those who are intimately involved. If you are aware of what is happening, and you know that America is supporting it, and you still consider it to be none of your business, or even none of the business of those who oppose it, then you are abandoning the very idea of cause and effect. In discussing most Israeli actions during this war, that abandonment seems to be increasingly invoked by its defenders. If we manage to break past that argument of having nothing to do with it, then the appeals to sanity start to come in. “Okay, I acknowledge we have something to do with Israel, but why are you putting Mexico and Palestine in the same category? What does ICE and the border wall have to do with Gaza, why are you calling for walls to be torn down everywhere?” Are there not similarities between how the threat of illegal immigration is expressed by American conservatives and how the threat of Palestinians is expressed in Israel? How migrants in so many countries around the world are fear mongered about? That all they want to do is to rape, is to pillage, that they take over communities, that the sight of their laborers is to be feared, that the sight of their families means they’re about to subsume you as a race? Technology from Israel’s Elbit Systems, the defense contractor, is building surveillance towers on the border with Mexico, just as mortars from that same contractor are being used by Israeli soldiers to bombard Palestinian towns in Gaza. CECOT, the Salvadoran mega-prison where innocents are being deported to right now, was constructed under the guise of holding “terrorists” indefinitely, borrowing language from the War on Terror, with President Bukele publicly making the comparison that Hamas was just like MS-13. ...

[Link to media]

As of 4/30/25 1:27am. Last new 4/28/25 4:57am.