Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Kevin Carson - Another Stupid Right-Wing Talking Point That Won’t Die

 

at 4/3/25 3:13pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Another Stupid Right-Wing Talking Point That Won’t DieDate: March 25th, 2025Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org The right-wing talking point that Black poverty is the result, not of historic injustice, but of “Black culture” — and particularly the effect of Great Society welfare programs on Black culture — dates almost as far back as the Great Society itself. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among other things a major early figure of neoconservatism, in the 1965 Moynihan Report (The Negro Family) blamed Black poverty on a “ghetto culture” of fatherless families and unemployment going back to slavery. Marvin Olasky took the argument a step further in his 1992 book The Tragedy of American Compassion, arguing that, while the problem indeed rooted in Black culture and family disintegration, it didn’t go back to Jim Crow or slavery; rather, it was created mostly by the welfare state’s “culture of dependency” — an argument popularized, in turn, by neoconservative politicians like Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp. The talking point has been repeatedly stressed over the years by people like columnist Thomas Sowell, who wrote in a 2015 column: The “legacy of slavery” argument is not just an excuse for inexcusable behavior in the ghettos. In a larger sense, it is an evasion of responsibility for the disastrous consequences of the prevailing social vision of our times, and the political policies based on that vision, over the past half century. More recently John Stossel (“Slavery Was a Global Phenomenon,” Reason, August 7) approvingly — and predictably — cited a comment by Wilfred Reilly, author of Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me: “Most problems in the modern black community don’t have anything to do with historical ethnic conflict 160 years ago.” Reilly says today’s problems began when government welfare began. “Crime in the black community,” he says, “increased about 800 percent between [around] 1963 and 1993. Racism didn’t increase between 1960 and the modern era. You’re looking at the impacts of the Great Society, the welfare programs.” In fact, as Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward showed in their radical history of the welfare state, Regulating the Poor, while the rise in urban Black crime and poverty in the postwar period was associated with family disintegration, the causality was entirely different from what Sowell and Stossel imply. The rise in fatherless households was ultimately an outgrowth of powerlessness and economic exploitation. The primary driver of family disintegration and unemployment was actually Black sharecroppers mass-migrating to northern cities after they were tractored off their land by white landowners. The large-scale migration overwhelmed job markets in northern cities; unlike the Okies of a previous generation who at least found agricultural work in California, former sharecroppers in New York and Chicago were essentially unemployable. Family breakdown was an inevitable result of economically superfluous fathers. You’d think even the likes of Sowell and Stossel would be able to grasp that all of this was possible only because the Black population of the rural South were dependent for their survival on sharecropping other people’s land in the first place. That was a state of affairs resulting directly from the fact that slave-owners’ plantations were not expropriated and given to former slaves as reparations. Instead, the planter aristocracy retained its property and survived as an economic ruling class in the postwar period, and the propertyless freed slaves were left with no means of survival but continuing to work the land of their former masters. Based on the very limited attempts local experiments with land reform that actually took place after the Civil War, we can see that a full-blown nationwide redistribution of plantation land to freed slaves would have fundamentally altered the balance of economic power. This was the finding of a paper by Melinda Miller, an economist specializing in racial inequality: After joining the Confederacy in 1861, the Cherokee Nation was forced during post-war negotiations to allow its former slaves to claim and improve any unused land in the Nation’s public domain ... I find the racial gap in land ownership, farm size, and investment in long-term capital projects is smaller in the Cherokee Nation than in the southern United States. The advantages Cherokee freedmen experience in these areas translate into smaller racial wealth and income gaps in the Cherokee Nation than in the South. Additionally, the Cherokee freedmen had higher absolute levels of wealth and higher levels of income than southern freedmen. These results together suggest that access to free land had a considerable and positive benefit on former slaves. The project of right-wing economists to minimize the role of slavery and racial injustice in present-day racial inequality, and to promote a counter-hypothesis of “those people brought it on themselves,” has become a full-blown industry. This has become especially so thanks to reaction against the 1619 Project. But simply put, Black poverty today is largely the result, whether directly or indirectly, of the fact that the dominant economic classes of the South were not only allowed to keep all the gains from injustice even after Emancipation, but to maintain a social order based on disfranchisement, petty apartheid, and naked terror for a century afterward. Since the raison d’etre of right-libertarianism and its funders is to defend the economic ruling class and the economic system that supports it, the prevalence of the “culture of poverty” trope is understandable

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— Kevin Carson - Basic Income: The Wonderful World That Might Have Been

 

at 4/3/25 3:09pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Basic Income: The Wonderful World That Might Have BeenDate: February 26th, 2025Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Advocates of Basic Income have trotted out a lot of arguments for its benefits, but I never expected John Stossel (“Universal Basic Income Shows Why Giving People ‘Free Money’ Doesn’t Work,” Reason, October 9) to produce such a convincing one. When I was young, If I hadn’t needed to work to support myself, I wouldn’t have pushed so hard to overcome my fears, my stuttering, and my reluctance to speak publicly. I wouldn’t have become successful. I might have stayed in bed most of the day. There you have it folks. UBI might have prevented John Stossel. Instead of decades of spewing unrelieved right-wing hackery, he might have just stayed in bed. The wonderful world that might have been. Seriously — I guess — he trots out what are intended as arguments against UBI. In my new video, UBI activist Conrad Shaw agrees, “You would effectively get rid of extreme poverty immediately.” He says a UBI will help people “start businesses, fix their homes, or invest in sustainable gardens.” Well, “sustainable gardens” might be nice, but someone still has to make stuff. And that requires work — often difficult work. In response to Stossel’s claim that with a UBI he’d have just stayed in bed, Shaw replies: “I don’t believe you. Nobody actually wants that….People find their passions not simply because they need to make money.” In refutation of the claims for UBI, Stossel cites a study funded by Silicon Valley techbro Sam Altman (reported back in July by Reason) which gave low-income people $1000 a month for three years. It delivered, according to Stossel, none of the great things that were promised. After three years of getting $1,000/month, UBI recipients were actually a little deeper in debt than before. Why? Because they worked less. Their partners did, too. Some recipients talked about starting businesses, but few actually tried it. Most who said they did start a business waited until the third year of the study — when their free money was about to end. I’m not surprised. Give people free money, you take away an incentive to work. Incentives matter. Shaw argues, “We conflate the idea of work with jobs.” It’s true, people do meaningful work outside jobs. But being paid to do a job does say you’re worth that amount to somebody. “How much money are you worth to the kid you’re raising?” Shaw replies. “The parent who’s sick that you’re taking care of?” A lot. “But it doesn’t address that other people have to work to pay for it.” Reason’s earlier negative reporting on the study, by Eric Boehm, was fairly straightforward about what was so objectionable about the outcome: people chose more leisure. “You can think of total household income, excluding the transfers, as falling by more than 20 cents for every $1 received,” wrote Eva Vivalt, a University of Toronto economist who co-authored the study, in a post on X. “This is a pretty substantial effect.” But if those people are working less, the important question to ask is how they spent the extra time — time that was, effectively, purchased by the transfer payments. Participants in the study generally did not use the extra time to seek new or better jobs — even though younger participants were slightly more likely to pursue additional education. There was no clear indication that the participants in the study were more likely to take the risk of starting a new business…. Instead, the largest increases were in categories that the researchers termed social and solo leisure activities. Some advocates for UBI might argue that the study shows participants were better off, despite the decline in working hours and earnings. Indeed, maybe that’s the whole point? “While decreased labor market participation is generally characterized negatively, policymakers should take into account the fact that recipients have demonstrated — by their own choices — that time away from work is something they prize highly,” the researchers note in the paper’s conclusion. Foundation for Economic Education also jumped on the results of the study. Right-libertarians have been agreed for a long time that anything that reduces people’s incentive to work or increases the bargaining power is bad — very bad. Fifty years ago, Murray Rothbard argued — contra Milton Friedman’s claim that a guaranteed minimum income via the negative income tax would be more efficient than the existing welfare state — that “the only thing that makes our present welfare system even tolerable is precisely its inefficiency, precisely the fact that in order to get on the dole one has to push one’s way through an unpleasant and chaotic tangle of welfare bureaucracy.” One indication of right-libertarian hostility toward anything that disincentivizes work or strengthen’s the bargaining power of labor is that Reason, FEE, and Stossel were all over the study quoted above — but positive news about UBI gets crickets. It’s sort of the same way they tout the hell out of the occasional report that minimum wage increases hurt employment, while ignoring any evidence in the other direction. ...

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— Kevin Carson - “Libertarian” Stossel Marginally Less Statist Than Trump

 

at 4/3/25 3:08pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: “Libertarian” Stossel Marginally Less Statist Than TrumpDate: December 16th, 2015Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Seemingly John Stossel never sits down to write without the goal of further lowering the bar for qualifying as a libertarian. This time (“My Trump Problem,” Reason, Nov. 11), he’s managed to push the criterion to the all-time low of being somewhat less statist than Donald Trump. Stossel’s first problem with Trump allegedly centers on what he (Stossel) calls “free trade.” “Free trade,” he says, “is mutually beneficial. Everybody wins.” But Stossel goes on to make it clear he has no idea what “free trade” even means: “[I]t’s appalling when Trump calls trade agreements a ‘disaster’ and says he’d ‘punish’ Mexico with higher tariffs…” So if Stossel equates “free trade” to “trade agreements,” he’s really no more pro-free trade than Trump is. He just favors a different form of protectionism. Trump favors old-fashioned tariffs, and Stossel favors the kind of “intellectual property” protectionism which is built into so-called “Free Trade Agreements” and is actually their primary purpose. “Intellectual property” is no less protectionist than tariffs, and indeed is arguably more so. Tariffs no longer serve the needs of transnational corporations. In fact they impede their business model, based on distributing production across globalized supply chains and importing finished goods produced under contract in other countries. “Intellectual property” serves the same protectionist function for corporations, on a global scale, that the now-outmoded tariffs once did back when American manufacturing corporations produced goods inside this country. Both tariffs and “intellectual property” serve the same function of giving the corporation a monopoly on the sale of a particular good in a particular market; the difference is that while tariffs operated at national borders, “intellectual property” gives the corporation a monopoly on disposal of the outsourced product wherever in the world it happens to be produced or sold. So on “free trade,” Stossel isn’t even marginally less statist than Trump. In fact he may be more so. On eminent domain, Stossel really does come out ahead of Trump — by a hair’s breadth at least. Trump flat-out calls eminent domain “wonderful.” Stossel, in contrast, says it “can be” wonderful — if, that is, “it’s put to important public use, say, claiming land for highways, railroads or a pipeline.” So eminent domain is corrupt “crony capitalism” when it’s exercised in the interest of local real estate interests — but an “important public use” when it socializes a major operating cost of large corporate interests on a nationwide scale. The railroad land grants were a major component of the corporatist corruption for which the Gilded Age is infamous over a century later. They involved the total transformation of the American economy through the use of government power, with a centralized, high-capacity system of national trunk lines rendering artificially profitable the distribution of goods from national manufacturing corporations over nationwide wholesale and retail networks. The result was artificially large production units and artificially large market areas, which were profitable only because distribution was rendered artificially cheap and the big players were given an unfair competitive advantage over otherwise more efficient local producers. The nature of the “public use” served by the Interstate Highway System is suggested by the “What’s good for GM is good for America” quip from former General Motors CEO Charlie Wilson, who oversaw the project. Not only did the project spark a new wave of concentration in food processing and retail, but it gave a massive government-subsidized boost to urban sprawl and the car culture — “good for GM” indeed. As for pipelines, why is it illegitimate for Trump to use eminent domain to get land for a casino from an unwilling seller, or for a price they considered unacceptable — but totally legit to do the same thing to a farmer or Native tribe in order to subsidize the fossil fuels industry and provide artificially cheap inputs to energy-guzzling big business? Once again Stossel demonstrates that, when we scrutinize the core of his “libertarian” principles, “there’s no there there.”

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— Kevin Carson - Move Over, Hollywood: Stossel’s Writing His Own Fantasy

 

at 4/3/25 3:07pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Move Over, Hollywood: Stossel’s Writing His Own FantasyDate: July 13th, 2015Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Every time I write a commentary on one of John Stossel’s godawful columns, I tell myself I’ll lay off him for a while. But good lord, this latest wretched little piece of pro-corporate apologetics (“Corporations Have Become Hollywood’s Go-To Villains,” Reason, July 1) is about the worst thing he’s ever done. The biggest challenge any principled defender of free markets encounters is all the people who think the “free market” equals corporate capitalism or big business domination of society. And the damage done by self-professed “libertarian” corporate shills like Stossel make the challenge ten times worse. Stossel complains that his beloved corporations are vilified by Hollywood, through plots in which “evil corporations routinely dispatch heartless goons to rough up whistleblowers, political activists and average citizens.” In real life, Stossel says, corporate behavior is completely different. See, “abusing customers” is “a bad business model” — “it rarely happens, and when it does it’s unsustainable.” “In the real world, instead of killing customers or scheming to keep them poor, companies profit by trying really hard to give us what we want, and they prefer that we stay healthy, if only so that we keep buying their stuff and to limit their insurance liability.” I think it’s Hollywood that’s describing the real world here, and Stossel who’s writing ideologically-tinted fantasy. When Stossel says corporations don’t do these things because it’s bad for business, is he describing how things would work in an idealized free market? Does he think what we have right now is a free market, and corporations in our present reality actually operate according to his ideal set of rules? If what we have right now is a free market, why does Stossel feel the need to write columns promoting an economic liberty that already exists? Or if it’s an unfree market and there are restrictions on economic liberty, does Stossel see corporations as only the victims and never the beneficiaries? I have no idea what Stossel actually means by this incoherent garbage, and frankly I doubt he does either. In any case, the actual behavior of real-world corporations is a lot closer to Hollywood’s depiction than to Stossel’s. We need look no further than Hollywood itself — an industry whose entire business model centers on robbing customers through state-enforced copyright monopolies, backed by a whole host of draconian legislation under which people suffer enormous fines, get Internet access shut off or have their domain names seized without due process of law. If we survey the actual global economy, we find the most profitable global corporations all depend on the same “intellectual property”-based business model: software, entertainment, biotech, pharma, electronics… even offshored manufacturing depends on IP to enforce a monopoly on disposal of the product contracted out to independent sweatshops. That’s why the main effect of so-called “Free Trade Agreements” is not to lower tariff trade barriers, but to drastically increase “intellectual property” trade barriers. Another huge chunk of the global economy is extractive industries like mining, logging, oil and agribusiness, most of which still operate on land that was stolen from the people under colonial and neo-colonial regimes. They include evil corporations like BP (which helped overthrow Mossadeq), Shell (which hires death squads to terrorize local activists), Rio Tinto (with its history of backing terror squads and robbing native people of their land), and United Fruit/Chiquita (which helped overthrow Arbenz for trying to return some of the land it stole from the peasantry). Domestically, the US economy would be in a state of permanent depression if not for a permanent war economy and the state-sponsored automobile-highway complex to utilize otherwise idle industrial capacity, and chronic deficit spending to provide otherwise superfluous investment capital with an outlet in the form of government securities with guaranteed returns. Even small downtown businesses depend on licensing and zoning to suppress competition from self-employed microentrepreneurs operating out of their own homes. In short, under the present unholy alliance between capital and the state, big business makes money by “dispatch[ing] heartless goons to rough up whistleblowers, political activists and average citizens…, killing customers [and] scheming to keep them poor…”

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— Kevin Carson - John Stossel: A Parody of Self-Parody

 

at 4/3/25 3:06pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: John Stossel: A Parody of Self-ParodyDate: May 27th, 2015Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org Every time I read a column by John Stossel, I think my estimation of him has fallen to its theoretical limit. And then I read the next one. For years, Stossel has tipped his hat to the idea that “pro-market” and “pro-business” are not the same thing. He occasionally gives an example of welfare for big business and the wealthy, like the Export-Import Bank or subsidized insurance for beach houses. But it’s almost always peripheral to the main body of American corporate capitalism (which is just fine and dandy like it is, and would be even more like it is if only government would leave it alone). His latest example of the wonders of a free, competitive market is — wait for it — the pharmaceutical industry (“Capitalism Spurs Medical Innovation,” Reason, May 20). That tiny, whimpering gargle you hear is the last feeble vestige of Stossel’s credibility giving up the ghost. After years of being the political member of the family who (ahem) “defended free markets,” Stossel’s brother Tom has finally found a political issue that makes him passionately pro-“free market.” And that issue is… people picking on the drug industry. That’s right, the drug industry — a contender for the most subsidized, protected and cartelized industry in existence, with the possible exception of military contractors — is the poster child for the wonders of free enterprise. And it’s the critics of this paragon of rugged individualism who finally got Tom’s free market goat. Among the howlers: Stossel gives the example of a cancer drug that kept someone alive for fifteen years, but costs $123,000 a year. “That cost… seems outrageous, especially because activists claim government funds all-important scientific research. But that’s a lie. Eighty-seven percent of new drugs are discovered by private industry; only 13 percent come from public-sector research.” First of all, whether or not “private industry” conducts the research and whether government funds it are two entirely different things. By conflating them, Stossel exposes himself as unworthy of ever being taken seriously about anything ever again. And second, the refundable federal R&D tax credit — one that you get regardless of whether you pay any taxes at all — accounts for about half of all drug company R&D. That’s just another kind of government funding. As for the drugs that actually were developed mostly with that other 13% of direct funding, by act of Congress the patents are given away to the drug companies that sell them so they can mark the price up astronomically — even though they didn’t pay to develop them. Stossel also mentions the costly testing regime, which only “vilified industry has the patience and self-interest to wade through…” You’d think they were the victims of this process, rather than the beneficiaries — and instigators — of an enormous entry barrier that leaves only the giant corporate players in the game, and thereby reduces price competition. Stossel also doesn’t mention that most R&D isn’t done to develop breakthrough drugs, but rather to tweak old drugs just enough to repatent. And even for genuinely new drugs, most testing to secure patent lockdown on the major possible variants rather than to test the version actually marketed. Anyway it’s patents — not production cost — that mostly govern drug prices. Companies can charge whatever the market will bear because they have a government-granted monopoly on the sale of any particular drug — just as protectionist as any tariff. Stossel says he’ll trust the incentives of the “free market” and “competition” over government to keep people happy and healthy. But the drug industry’s business model — the same business model of cost maximization and guaranteed profit that prevails among public utilities and military contractors — is about as far from the free market as you can get. To paraphrase something Arthur Chu said on Twitter several weeks ago, in response to those who mock protestors for denouncing capitalism while carrying iPhones, capitalism — or any other ism — doesn’t produce anything. It’s labor, human effort and ingenuity, that have produced things under every ism in history. The isms just determine who gets paid. And the drug industry is a classic example of this. The drug companies actively impede the horizontal collaboration and sharing of information that are at the heart of scientific progress, through secrecy, stovepiped bureaucracies and non-disclosure agreements. And you can be sure the actual researchers who develop drugs — and then sign over the patents to their employer — don’t see much of the money. Big Pharma isn’t about research and discovery. It’s about extracting rents from them through enclosure and control — with armed government thugs backing it up and enforcing its protectionist monopolies. Far from being friends of the free market, drug companies are its mortal enemy. And John Stossel has revealed himself to be its mortal enemy as well.

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— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 13.

 

at 4/3/25 8:31am

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 13.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: January 28, 1888Notes: Whole No. 117. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 3, 2025 from http://www.readliberty.org “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. Proudhon’s profound and brilliant article on the nature, object, and destiny of the State, begun in this issue, will be concluded in the next. After that I shall have some interesting announcements to make regarding forthcoming serials. It is very commonly urged in opposition to the no-government doctrine as taught in this paper that it contradicts itself by maintaining the right to use force in self-defence. Defence, it is claimed, is as truly government as offence. Do those who make this claim realize the position they take? It is nothing less than this: There is no difference between governing and refusing to be governed. Put that in your pipes and smoke it, critics mine. The next meeting of the Anarchists’ Club will be addressed by C. S. Griffin on the subject of “Law, Communism, and Anarchy.” Mr. Griffin is a Communist, and is not put forward by the Club as an exponent of its principles. But it is glad to hear what he has to say. No doubt the discussion to follow his address will be of an interesting character. The meeting will be held on Sunday, January 29, at half past two o’clock. At what hall may be ascertained from the Sunday Notice columns of the “Herald” and “Globe” of Saturday and Sunday. If the Anarchistic Communists contemplated any such voluntary arrangement as Comrade Labadie supposes in another column, there would indeed, as he claims, be no confusion in thought, no conflict between them and the Anarchists. But they do not; that is just the trouble. If you drive them with logic, they will fall back upon authority; if you let them alone, they will talk liberty one minute and authority the next. I perfectly agree with John F. Kelly’s statement in the “Alarm” “that universal Communism (and all the preachers of Communism mean it to be universal) is impossible without the most rigid, despotic control.” Rev. R. I. Holaind, a learned Jesuit father and professor of ethics in Maryland College, has written a book entitled “Ownership and Natural Right,” in the preface of which he says: “Ownership of every description has been assailed by Pierre Proudhon with a sort of blasphemous fierceness which has compelled both Christians and scientists to turn away in disgust.” Either through ignorance or malice, Rev. R. I. Holaind, the learned Jesuit father and professor of ethics in Maryland College, lies. Every one familiar with the writings of Pierre Proudhon knows that he did not assail ownership of every description, but, on the contrary, defended ownership of a certain description with a force and vigor never equalled. Some honorable judge was reported in the newspapers the other day to have announced that “no Anarchist, Socialist, or other enemy of the government,” need apply to him for naturalization papers. He would refuse them all. The poor Socialists are punished for too much devotion to government just as severely as the Anarchist is for his deadly hatred of all government. Yet I fancy that, were some foreigners to be tried by this learned judge, he would pompously lecture to him on the necessity of getting acquainted with the “spirit of American institutions.” By the way, are not the men connected with the big dailies now advocating government control of the telegraph (which idea is indisputably Communistic) in danger of being disfranchised? Dr. Gifford, a Boston clergyman, recently announced his conversion to George’s Anti-Poverty cause, but took pains to explain that he only believes in the “brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God” principle of their propaganda, and is not given over to the land-value tax plan of salvation. The tax idea is George’s only contribution to the Anti-Poverty cause, which is as old as history, and for a minister of Christ to be “converted” to the principle of the fatherhood of God, etc., of George is to repeat the experience of the sailor who, brought before a judge on a charge of soundly thrashing a Jew, pleaded his desire to avenge the blood of his Saviour whom the Jews crucified, and, when asked why he sought to recall events eighteen centuries old, replied in astonishment that he had heard of the crime “only the night before.” Independent Women. [Letter to Gramont, a writer for L’Intransigeant. — Translated from that journal for Liberty by F. R. C.] Sir: You have often stood up against the cruel situation of women, in actual society, when they find themselves without resource, left to themselves. Since it is not possible for them to earn their livelihood by laboring, they find themselves placed, you say, in this mournful alternative,— to become prostitutes or die of hunger. I repeat your words in all their crudeness. You added that a woman ought to be free; to dispose of her person as she sees fit. But that she cannot escape the obligation of making a trade of her favors,— this is what seems revolting and odious to you. ...

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— Sheldon Richman - Real Liberalism and the Law of Nature

 

at 4/3/25 1:17am

Author: Sheldon RichmanTitle: Real Liberalism and the Law of NatureDate: August 10th, 2007Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org “Our leaders invent nothing but new taxes, and conquer nothing but the pockets of their subjects.” — Thomas Hodgskin Is government the source of our rights? I fear that today many people would say yes. Not infrequently it is said that the government or the Constitution grants us freedom of speech or press or the right to own property. This offends the natural-law tradition that was essential to the genesis of classical liberalism (“liberalism”) and the vital institutions it spawned. While some prominent early liberals sought to overthrow natural law in favor of the seemingly more-scientific utilitarianism, the heart and soul of liberalism is — and remains — the natural law. The philosophy would be impoverished without it. Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) well understood this. He deserves to be better known than he is. Hodgskin was an early editor of The Economist and an important influence on Herbert Spencer, who also worked at that publication. Hodgskin is something of a puzzle for many people. He is often described as a Ricardian socialist, but in his case the label is misleading. Having lived before the marginal revolution, in which Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian school, and other economists provided an alternative to the Adam Smith/David Ricardo labor theory of value, Hodgskin did regard labor, rather than utility, as the source of economic value. [UPDATE: There are indications in Hodgskin’s writings that he regarded utility as a fundamental economic phenomenon. He writes in Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital: “But it is quite plain that the sum the weaver will be disposed to give for the thread will depend on his view of its utility.” Nevertheless, he thought that what people found useful had to be created by labor.] But calling him a socialist is bound to confuse. He was indeed a critic of “capitalism,” by which he and others back then meant government intervention on behalf of capital to the prejudice of labor. But he was no advocate of state control of the means of production. On the contrary, he was a influenced by the radical market economist J. B. Say and believed violations of laissez faire, such as tariffs, are what exploited workers by depriving them of their full, market-derived product. Only in a fully free and openly competitive environment void of privilege (“Middle English, from Old French, from Latin, a law affecting one person“) could laborers achieve justice. (Hodgskin developed his sympathy for labor while in the navy, where he observed the cruelty toward sailors. He himself was disciplined and eventually court-martialed and discharged.) As David Hart and Walter Grinder write, “The radical individualist Thomas Hodgskin … gives a clear example of the application of the libertarian nonaggression principle to the acquisition and exchange of property. He also implies that those who benefit from ‘artificial’ property rights, that is, by force and state privilege, comprise a class antagonistic to the producing class.” How unfortunate that siding with workers against government intervention on behalf of business has come to considered anti-libertarian! There was a time when one could write a book, as Hodgskin did, titled Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital without being thought a communist. (A modern example is here.) The work of Hodgskin that Hart and Grinder were referring to is The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), which he signed “A Labourer.” The book is a series of letters to Lord Brougham on the moral and legal status of property. This book will be worth revisiting in the future, so I will confine today’s report to the introductory letter. It is a good indication of Hodgskin’s natural-law approach to liberty and government, an approach that ought to be emphasized in the liberal expression. (This is not to slight the concern with consequences. But it is to reject the notion that only consequences in the narrow sense matter. For some pregnant thoughts on this subject, see Roderick Long’s blog post here.) Natural Phenomenon Hodgskin was alarmed that few among the general public or in Parliament understood that society is a natural phenomenon, rather than an artificial product of government. It was too commonly thought that without a constant stream of new legislation, society would run down and turn chaotic. (Have we heard anything like this lately?) He wanted to set Lord Brougham straight on this point. With one or two exceptions, they [members of Parliament] are so ignorant that they have yet to learn the existence of any natural laws regulating society. They believe that it is held together by the statutes at large; and they know no other laws which influence its destiny than those decreed by themselves and interpreted by the judges. But if no one understands the true nature of society, i.e., that it is essentially self-regulating, then how can a legislator know that he must keep from interfering with it? It’s a question we could put to almost any member of Congress. ...

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— Kevin Carson - Nice Hypothesis You Got There, Walter…

 

at 4/2/25 11:09pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: Nice Hypothesis You Got There, Walter…Subtitle: …Be a Shame If Somebody Tried to Falsify ItDate: March 6th, 2025Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org The Foundation for Economic Education’s specialty is making “arguments” via the uncritical assertion of right-wing talking points. If anybody’s the go-to guy for that, it’s Walter Block — especially when if it’s the worn-out “minimum wages cause unemployment” talking point (“Will an Increase in the Minimum Wage Give America a Raise? No,” FEE, Oct. 1). In the world of right-libertarian apologetics, this — even more so than for most topics — is a topic that calls for a by-the-numbers commentary piece. And Walter, predictably, checks all the boxes. “What determines wage levels in the first place? ... [T]he answer is discounted marginal revenue product, or productivity…” Check. “What is my fate in the presence of a minimum wage law that sets the minimum above [my marginal productivity] ... ? I will be consigned to a life of unemployment.” Check. “If the minimum wage is so great, if it actually boosts salaries, why limit it to $12 per hour? Why not $12,000, or $12 million?” Check. Let’s take a closer look at Walter’s core assertion — that wages are determined by marginal productivity. As he elaborates on the claim: Suppose my productivity is $5 per hour. That means that for every 60 minutes I am on your shop floor, your revenue increases by precisely that amount. You would not pay me more than that amount, because if you did, you would lose money on the deal. If my wage were $6 per hour, you would be out of pocket for $1 each such time period. But my wage, at least in equilibrium, cannot be any less than that amount either. For example, if you pay me only $3, you earn a pure profit of $2, and other competing employers will bid my wage up to that amount, again, in equilibrium. There is no guarantee that I will always and ever earn that exact amount, but powerful profit and loss market forces will continually work to push me in that direction. That last sentence — that “powerful profit and loss market forces will continually work to push me” toward a wage based on marginal productivity — is key. Now let’s take a look at a quote from Ludwig von Mises, in Epistemological Problems of Economics: “If a contradiction appears between a theory and experience, we must always assume that a condition pre-supposed by the theory was not present, or else there is some error in our observation.” We saw Block’s statement of theory above. The theory includes a prediction: that higher minimum wages will result in increased unemployment. What does experience tell us? According to a report from the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, “California’s $20-an-hour minimum wage for larger fast food chains,” which went into effect April 1, “has not led to overall job losses.” Now, according to Mises — whom Walter, as a devout Austrian economist, presumably reveres — there’s a direct contradiction between the claim that wages are determined by marginal productivity and the associated prediction that minimum wage increases will cause unemployment, and the empirical observation that a $20 minimum wage increase did not, in fact, increase unemployment. The clear implication, as Mises put it, is that “a condition pre-supposed by the theory was not present.” The most likely culprit, as a condition not actually met, was Block’s assumption of “powerful profit and loss market forces” pushing wages to their equilibrium value based on marginal productivity. Given centuries of state intervention to reduce the bargaining power of labor relative to capital — starting with the creation of the large-scale wage labor market itself, by separating labor from ownership of the means of production and subsistence via Enclosure — it’s quite plausible that state-mandated minimum wage increases actually come at the expense of economic rents accruing to employers. That is, employers make artificially high profit by paying artificially low wages, thanks to structural barriers that insulate them from those “powerful profit and loss market forces” that would otherwise result in labor receiving its full product. In fact Clark’s concept of “marginal productivity,” and the claim that it determines the distribution of factor payments, is itself flawed — circular or tautological, to be precise — as I argue elsewhere (see pp. 28–39). But there’s no need to complicate things here. For the discussion at hand, it’s sufficient to note that making predictions, based on economic laws, requires the capacity for critically evaluating or understanding the principles one is appealing to. And that definitely rules out Walter Block.

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— Kevin Carson - The Disconnect Is Coming From Inside the House

 

at 4/2/25 11:00pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: The Disconnect Is Coming From Inside the HouseDate: November 25th, 2024Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org At Reason, C.J. Ciaramella (“Tim Scott Says UAW Workers Should Be Fired, Invoking Ronald Reagan”) gives GOP Presidential hopeful Tim Scott two stars for his proposal to fire striking auto workers like Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers and broke PATCO: “He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely.” Ciaramella’s reservations are limited to concern over the possibility that gummint might be invading the holy prerogatives of private business. As regard the proposal itself, he makes no pretense of being anything other than completely on board with the idea, just so long as it’s the Big Three auto executives themselves who do the firing. Unions themselves are — as goes without saying for a commentator at Reason — problematic at best and flaming red ruin on wheels at worst. Ciaramella makes it clear that “UAW’s demands are fair game for criticism,” noting that “UAW leaders have been bargaining for a four-day workweek, in addition to higher wages and cost of living protections.” He goes on to quote Scott with apparent approval: We’re seeing the UAW fight for more benefits and less hours working,” Scott said at the event. “More pay and fewer days on the job. It’s a disconnect from work, and we have to find a way to encourage and inspire people to go back to work. The “disconnect” is Scott’s and Ciaramella’s. Workers have been seeking to “disconnect from work” — to obtain more pay and more benefits for fewer hours working — since the beginning of capitalism. For their part, capitalists have sought to pay less for more hours; and the state violence on which they have relied to pursue this goal has been integral to the capitalist economic model on a scale which organized labor, right-libertarian pearl clutching about “union thugs” notwithstanding, could hardly dream of. The landed classes and capitalist farmers of 18th century Britain openly lamented the fact that the rural laboring class would not work as many hours, or for as little pay, as their betters desired so long as they had independent access to means of subsistence on common pastures, wood, and waste. For example, a 1739 pamphlet argued that “the only way to make the lower orders temperate and industrious… was ‘to lay them under the necessity of labouring all the time they can spare from rest and sleep, in order to procure the common necessities of life’.” Another tract called “Essay on Trade and Commerce” warned in 1770 that “[t]he labouring people should never think themselves independent of their superiors…. The cure will not be perfect, till our manufacturing poor are contented to labour six days for the same sum which they now earn in four days.” Scott and Ciaramella also display more than a little disconnect with the history of right-libertarian ideology itself. Libertarian polemicists never tire of giving capitalism the credit for the shift to a 40-hour work week in the mid-2oth century — a development which, had he been around at the time, Tim Scott would have doubtless denounced as a “disconnect from work.” The standard argument by apologists for capitalism is that capital accumulation by the wealthy leads to capital investment in new forms of machinery that increase the productivity of labor. And increases in labor productivity are automatically passed along to workers. As the productivity of labor goes up, capitalist employers are forced to raise wages to match productivity; if they don’t they lose out in the competition for workers. As Percy Greaves put it, “No businessman in a free market society can long pay a worker a dollar an hour and sell his product for five dollars an hour.” Walter Block gives the example of a newly hired worker with a marginal productivity of $20/hour. What will his wage tend to be?…. Suppose it is $3 (something like that would be the offer expected by the average “progressive”). The employer would profit to the extent of $17. Would matters end there? Not bloody likely. Nature abhors a vacuum and economics does so with profits: they serve as blood in the water does for a shark. Many other companies would like to have Joe’s services at $3. The only way they can entice him away from his present employer is to offer him more money. How much more? At $4, there would still be profits of $16 to be garnered. At $12, the employer would still “exploit” the employee, but now to the tune of $8. Joe’s wage would rise to as close to $20 as possible, given that there are transaction costs of finding such people, bidding for them, etc. Wages, so the right-libertarian orthodoxy goes, are determined — like the returns to all “factors of production” — by marginal productivity. Although this argument for a connection between productivity and wages undermines Scott’s stance against less work for more pay, it’s largely irrelevant to the real world; it pretends that economic relations between capital and labor are actually governed by the “free market,” rather than by power. We can see the falsity of this assumption in the fact that — among many others — since the beginning of union membership’s decline in the 1970s and its utter collapse from the ‘80s on, wages have ceased to go up with productivity and have instead remained stagnant. Since Reagan and Fed Chairman Paul Volker declared war on organized labor and workers’ bargaining power, we have seen the material gains from increased productivity almost entirely funneled to the super-wealthy. The top 1%’s share of total wealth has gone from around a quarter to something like 40%, and the differential between CEO pay and that of production workers has increased several times over. ...

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— Kevin Carson - The Weird Correlation Between “Understanding Economics” and Payola

 

at 4/2/25 10:49pm

Author: Kevin CarsonTitle: The Weird Correlation Between “Understanding Economics” and PayolaDate: October 6th, 2024Source: Retrieved 04/03/2025 from c4ss.org For more years than most of us have been alive, by-the-numbers “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” puff pieces have been an almost daily staple at right-libertarian propaganda sites like Foundation for Economic Education. As I remark every time I see one — more than once in written commentary — these people demonstrate a lack of basic comprehension of concepts like ceteris paribus (“all other things being equal”). One factor in particular that they fail to acknowledge, in generalizing about wages and unemployment, is elasticity of demand. The effect of higher wages on unemployment depends on how elastic — how price- sensitive — the demand for a particular good or service is. But just now I was surprised to see John Miltimore, at FEE (“Why Are Fast Food Prices So High?” July 9), demonstrate an awareness of the concept: “Fast food prices are high,” he explains, “because demand for fast food remains really high, despite those higher prices.” (He also managed to drag in this tired, meaningless talking point: “At their most basic level, prices are determined by supply and demand.” But as I write elsewhere: The fact that prices are set by the balance of supply and demand is so obvious as to be almost a tautology. In any market where price formation is allowed to take place without interference from externally-imposed price caps or price floors, the final price is set by the balance of supply and demand. This is true even of situations where the supply or demand themselves are determined by class power…. The argument assumes that the supply and demand themselves are spontaneously arising quantities, and that the relative values of supply and demand aren’t determined by power relations. Yes — to repeat — by definition all market prices result from the interaction of supply and demand. Now ask yourself the important question: What institutional factors determine the supply and demand themselves? But getting back to the main subject: it’s weird how these people are able to recognize that demand inelasticity is a thing when they’re justifying higher fast food prices on behalf of the industry, but immediately forget it when they claim higher wages would result in unemployment. Two quips immediately come to mind as relevant here: The first, from Upton Sinclair, on the difficulty of getting someone to understand something “when his salary depends on not understanding it.” The second, from David Roth, that the job of people like Tyler Cowen is “to find new ways to say ‘actually, your boss is right.’” You might be tempted to suspect that the difference between their ability to appreciate nuance from one issue to another suggests they’re a bunch of hacks who tailor their understanding of “economics” to suit their donors’ interest. But although it probably explains some edge cases like John Stossel, the assumption of deliberate bad faith isn’t necessary for the most part. Rather, it’s most likely the kind of automatic filtering mechanism Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky described in Manufacturing Consent. The filtering mechanism is built right into the mission of organizations like Foundation for Economic Education, Future of Freedom Foundation, and the Reason Foundation. The mission is to defend “free market principles” or “the free enterprise system,” or something similar — which translates, in operational terms, to defending the legitimacy of most large corporations and billionaires. After all, these are the people who pay their salaries. This means that, except for the occasional instance of “crony capitalism” or “corporatism” — which it is to be made clear is atypical of our economic system as a whole and its dominant players — the commentary they publish should be geared to defend business interests against criticisms from the left. It follows that a piece justifying wages as simply reflecting the marginal productivity of labor or arguing that higher minimum wages will result in unemployment is likely to get published, whereas one pointing out that it’s not quite as simple as those talking points suggest will be… less than welcome. On the other hand, a commentary pointing out all the ways that blaming price increases on the market power of corporations is simplistic will get featured in exactly the way Miltimore’s did at FEE. Regardless, when reading right-libertarian economic commentary, you shouldn’t go looking for nuance or complexity when it doesn’t suit the interests of capital. At the risk of mixing metaphors, whether the writer of a given article strains at a gnat or swallows a camel depends on whose ox is being gored.

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— Margaret Killjoy - Mythmakers & Lawbreakers

 

at 4/2/25 7:26pm

Author: Margaret KilljoyTitle: Mythmakers & LawbreakersSubtitle: Anarchist Writers on FictionDate: 2009Source: <archive.org/details/mythmakerslawbre0000unse> Introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson THIS BOOK COLLECTS FOURTEEN INTERVIEWS WITH WRITERS who have either described themselves as anarchists, written about anarchists in historical or contemporary settings, or invented fictional cultures that they or others have called anarchist. Each person’s story is different, naturally, and the definitions they have given for anarchism are not the same either. Anarchy: absence of rulers, or absence of law? The original Greek suggests the former, common English usage since the seventeenth century, the latter; and it makes quite a difference which definition you use. So we find those interviewed here circling repeatedly around questions of definition, both of what the concept means, and how it can be applied to writing and to life, not only the lives of those included here, but the lives of everyone. These are knotty problems, and it’s no surprise that the questions and answers here keep pulling and prodding at them, hoping for some clarity. Another problem the interviews return to again and again is how to reconcile anarchist beliefs with actual life in the globalized capitalist system. Some of the writers here live by anarchist beliefs to a certain extent, publishing or distributing their writing outside the conventional publishing world, or living in alternative arrangements of one kind or another. Others live more outwardly conventional lives, while writing about anarchism and supporting it in their political action, of which writing is one part. No one can escape a certain amount of contradiction here; the world economy is almost entirely capitalist in structure, and state rule is an overarching reality in human affairs. So the interest in anarchism expressed by these writers, and the effect this complex of ideas has on their lives, has necessarily to involve various compromises and what might be called symbolic actions—as long as one remembers that symbolic actions are also real actions, not at all to be dismissed. Voting is a symbolic action, going to church is a symbolic action, speaking and writing and talking are symbolic actions; all are also real actions, and have real effects in the real world—partly by themselves, and partly by what they suggest symbolically we should do in all the rest of our actions. Here, therefore we are talking about ideology. I mean this in the way defined by Louis Althusser, which is roughly that an ideology is an imaginary relationship to a real situation. Both parts of the definition exist: there is a real situation, and by necessity our relationship to it is partly an imaginary one. So we all have an ideology, and in fact would be disabled or overwhelmed without one. The question then becomes, can we improve our ideology, in terms of both individual and collective function, and if so, how? Here is where anarchist ideas come strongly into play. We live in a destructive and unjust system, which is nevertheless so massively entrenched, so protected by money, law, and armed force, as to seem unchangeable, even nature itself; it strives to seem natural, so much so that it would be very difficult to imagine a way out or a way forward from the current state. Given this reality of our moment in history, what should we do? What can we do, right now, that would change the situation? One of the first and most obvious answers is: resist the current system in every way that is likely to do some good. That answer might rule out certain responses: people have — been resisting capitalism for well over a century now, and many of the first methods to occur to people have been tried and have failed. Spontaneous mass revolt has been tried and has usually failed. Organized insurrection has sometimes done better, but over the long haul has often rebounded in ways that worsened the situation. Labor action and legal reform often seem possible and sometimes have achieved tangible success, but again, ultimately, despite what they have achieved, we find ourselves in the situation we are in now, so obviously labor action and legal reform are not as effective as one would hope. Mass political education has for a long time been a goal of those interested in promoting change, and again successes can be pointed to, but the overall impact has not yet been effective enough to avoid the danger we find ourselves in. What then should we do? One thing that would help is to have some idea of what we might be trying to change toward; and this is where anarchism plays its part. As such it is a utopian political vision, and this is why several of the writers interviewed in this book are science fiction writers who have written stories describing anarchist situations as utopian spaces, as better systems that we should be struggling to achieve. This is my own situation; as a leftist, interested in opposing capitalism and to changing it to something more just and sustainable, I have once or twice tried to depict societies with anarchist aspects or roots. These, like the work of other science fiction writers, are thought experiments, designed to explore ideas by way of fictional scenarios. Problems can be discussed by way of dramatizations, and the appeal of an alternative society can be evoked for people to contemplate, to wish for, to work for. Until we have a vision of what we are working for, it is very hard to choose what to do in the present to get there. ...

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— Julian Langer - When We Are Human, by John Zerzan – a review

 

at 4/2/25 3:18pm

Author: Julian LangerTitle: When We Are Human, by John Zerzan – a reviewDate: 17 July 2021Source: <ecorevoltblog.wordpress.com/2021/07/17/when-we-are-human-by-john-zerzan-a-review> [DISCLAIMER] – following the publication of this review Zerzan has apologised publicly on his radio show for his piece on autism and I personally consider the matter to be resolved, though I can’t speak for anyone else. If you want to hear the apology, the episode can be listened to here – https://archive.org/details/anarchy-radio-07-20-2021_202107. I’ve made no changes to this review following this, but want it to be acknowledged openly. When I found that a copy of Zerzan’s new book, When We Are Human, had reached me I was immediately excited and keen to read. I am continually moved by Zerzan’s thought and writings, despite many points of difference in perspective or approach. It was largely a desire to encounter these differences that motivated me to email John and ask him to send me a copy of the book, to review. As I encountered these points of difference in perspective I was mostly very glad to experience them, because they affirmed my experience of John Zerzan as someone who is not me and someone I can appreciate for being-them and the thought being-theirs – there is one point of the text, which I go into more detail on in a more critical section of this review, that, I will share at this point, did offend me and is in my eyes the worst thing I’ve ever read by Zerzan; but I will state that much of this text is some of the best and most beautiful writings by Zerzan. This book, in my eyes, is largely a response to anti-humanist thought – thought that is critical of the concept of “human” – and misanthropic thought – thought pertaining to human-hating collectivised bigotry – within anarchist and environmentalist theory and practice. I have described my thought as anti-humanist and feel that label is somewhat fair placed on me, and with this encounter this quality of the book as an attempt to save an aspect of Zerzan’s thought that is very intense – anthropological-realism. It seems clear to me that Zerzan believes in Humanity, very much from an anthropologically-centred world-view, and I appreciate this quality of his thought, as Zerzan seeks to defend Humanity from misanthropic hatred, bigotry and abuse – though it is undeniable that there is a strong anthropocentrism within Zerzan’s thought, with animal, floral and mineral life being all-but-excluded from the thought within this text (perhaps there is potential for a follow up from Zerzan, drawing from anthrozoology and zoopoetics[?]). There are some stunningly beautiful pieces of writing in this collection. An example of this early on in the text is a section on fire, where Zerzan shares personal encounters with fire in a way that I thoroughly enjoyed. While the book is somewhat history-dense, I enjoyed Zerzan’s affirmation of the Luddite rebellions, his (attempted) destruction of Enlightenment thought and a section affirming anti-history that also acknowledges that “this book … is a testimony to the need for historical awareness” – a wonderful contradiction/paradox, which I feel truly embodies so much of Zerzan’s work. Like many other of his books, there are excellent diatribes seeking to destroy time, technology and the failure that is civilisation. My favourite section of this book, which I think might be Zerzan’s best piece of writing, is the section titled Experience, where he affirms that “(w)e must uncover, reclaim, the immediacy of lived experience …” and that “(t)he absence of mediation doesn’t last …”. These are all aspects of the book that I value and feel appreciation for. The positioning of this critical turn is very intentional and I believe that this would likely be obvious if I were not stating it outright here. I go into more detail on the aspects of the book that I am critiquing here than those I am affirming as valuable, as I feel that the desirable qualities of this book need my affirmation less than the undesirable qualities deserve my destruction. It should be clear that I am positing value in this book as worth-reading-and-considering and I encourage no one reading these critical points to reject the book because of them. The three areas being critiqued are a section on autism, Zerzan’s anti-philosophy and the matters of individualism, egoism, nihilism and postmodernism (and how much [perhaps] John misses the fucking point[!]). The piece on autism is the only piece of writing by Zerzan that has ever left me feeling utterly disgusted by him and I will not deny that it is offensive to try and save John some face. Zerzan attempts to make the argument that autism is a product of civilisation and contemporary domesticating-distance, and that Humanity is losing its humanness to becoming-autistic, relying on many stereotypes regarding individuals we call autistic that I can tell you, from my lived experience of working with autistic individuals, are often bullshit. From a primitivist historical-anthropological-realist ideology, Zerzan’s positioning of autism is easily rejectable, given the likelihood of autistic individuals having distinct advantages in hunter-gather contexts[1] and the likelihood of their being “championed” in the context of pre-civilised communities[2]. Positioning individuals this culture calls autistic as being not-desirable, or less-than(-Human), is the worst part of this book and the worst I’ve ever read by Zerzan. ...

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— Crimethinc, Anonymous - The Only Immigrant Trying to Steal My Job Is Elon Musk

 

at 4/2/25 1:59am

Author: Crimethinc, AnonymousTitle: The Only Immigrant Trying to Steal My Job Is Elon MuskSubtitle: A Bus Driver’s Perspective on Elon Musk’s Austerity MeasuresDate: February 24th, 2025Source: https://crimethinc.com/2025/02/24/the-only-immigrant-trying-to-steal-my-job-is-elon-musk-a-bus-drivers-account-of-life-in-the-trump-era Introduction In the following narrative, a bus driver describes how the cuts that Elon Musk is carrying out in the federal government are affecting ordinary public transit workers. There is a poetic opposition between the figure of the anonymous bus driver and Elon Musk, the billionaire car mogul. The bus driver and the automobile profiteer represent different modes of transportation—public and private—that imply different models for society. On the one hand, a vision of collectivity emerging from common resources and public service; on the other, an unbridled profit motive justifying privatization, isolation, and immiseration. Everyone riding together—or the lone plutocrat speeding away from a betrayed community. Why else market the “Cybertruck” as bulletproof? Elon Musk made much of his fortune from taxpayer-funded subsidies; now he is trying to delete all of the functions of the government except the ones that benefit him personally. The irony of a man who made his fortune selling cars implying that impoverished bus drivers are parasites on the public should not be lost on anyone. As much as Elon Musk pretends to be an enemy of big government, billionaires like him need the state more than anyone else does. It is easy enough to imagine public transit without the state—all it would take would be to abolish the mechanisms (such as property rights) that impose artificial scarcity, so that those who enjoy doing things for others’ benefit could do so without fear of going hungry. But it is not possible to imagine Elon Musk without a government forcefully extracting hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes with which to protect him from those he exploits and oppresses. People around the country have begun expressing their displeasure against Elon Musk by demonstrating at Tesla dealerships. Another round of demonstrations is scheduled for March 1, this Saturday. Without further ado, the bus driver’s story. “The Only Immigrant Trying to Steal My Job Is Elon Musk” “Did you see that Facebook post about the budget cuts?” my co-worker asks. “What the fuck, no,” I reply. She hands me her phone. I see a headline announcing that, due to the push to slash basic services coming from Elon Musk and Donald Trump, 20% of our funding for local public transportation is now threatened. Lawyers are fighting it out in the courts, but if these cuts go through, it will mean less service, possible layoffs, and lots of people not having access to a system that is one of the few lifelines for poor people in our area. People depend on these buses to get to their jobs, to medical appointments, to programs for special needs adults, to court dates. I sit back down, staring out the window at the cold, grey parking lot. I am waiting for a member of the morning shift to come in with a bus so I can take it out. A few buses dot the bus yard. They’re sitting idle because the parts on order haven’t come in for months—even years, in some cases—and because the city refuses to hire enough mechanics to keep up with daily maintenance. This means that drivers on night shift, like me, sometimes have to wait hours for a bus to arrive. Our transit agency, which contracts out to a huge multi-national corporation, is already dramatically underfunded. The new cuts will only compound our existing problems. “Fucking Musk, man,” I say with a sigh. Another co-worker on the night shift agrees with me. He’s in his mid-70s, but he’s still working full time because he recently burned through all his savings burying his parents. I launch into a long rant about how both Musk and Trump hate labor unions and workers and want to replace us all with artificial intelligence. A third co-worker, presumably a Trump supporter, grumbles about how “they” just want to blame the cuts threatening our jobs on the “administration.” Who else would you blame it on? It’s pitch-dark when I enter the trailer park, passing a metal gate, I drive slowly through the ever-growing rows of manufactured homes. Some of them have signs reading “For sale.” “Lots of people moving out?” I ask my only passenger. “Yeah, no one can afford to live here anymore,” she replies. As I turn the corner, she launches into a long tirade about the corporation who owns the trailer park and how they keep raising the cost of “space rent,” the monthly fee that mobile home owners pay to trailer park owners. “Every year the rent here goes up. New people move in from out of town and they can pay more, and that’s pushing us out,” she says, as I unhook her walker inside the cold, dark bus cab. “I don’t know why the landlords are so greedy. Do they just want everything?” I lower her and her walker down onto the pavement outside her trailer. As the electronic ramp whirls its gears, I turn to my left. In her front window, there is a strange collage of images of Donald Trump. It is faded and worn from the sun. I shake my head and chuckle, resisting the temptation to point out the obvious. How can you complain about a corporate landlord ruining your life, but place all of your hopes in another landlord who is trying to become a dictator? ...

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— Jean Dreze - Chomsky in India

 

at 4/1/25 6:00pm

Author: Jean DrezeTitle: Chomsky in IndiaDate: 2014Notes: This is Jean Dreze’s introduction to the book Democracy and Power, by Noam Chomsky (OpenBook, 2014).Source: Democracy and Power Sometime around 1991 I wrote to Noam Chomsky and invited him to give a few lectures in India. It felt like wishful thinking – for one thing, I had no idea how his visit would be financed, if he agreed. I did not even expect him to reply, flooded as he must have been with more important mail. So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a short letter from him just a few days later (these were the good old times when real letters were delivered at home by a live postperson). He wrote that he would be happy to come, and that the first week he was free was January 1996 – several years down the line. I wrote back that January 1996 would be fine, and that’s when he came. Easy Guest Astonishing as it may seem today, Chomsky was not particularly well known in India at that time. Even among left intellectuals, few had paid serious attention to his writings. That was, in fact, one of the reasons why I was hoping that he would accept my invitation. I felt that his ideas needed to be better known in India, where the tenets of Marxism did not do justice to the country’s rich experience of popular struggles. There is certainly much to learn from Marx, but it requires some serious suspension of common sense to think that the key to India’s social problems today lie in the writings of a 19th century German philosopher. India, of course, has its own galaxy of inspiring thinkers, within as well as outside the Marxist tradition. Yet Chomsky’s ideas seemed to me to fill some important gaps. Beyond that, I was hoping that Noam’s visit to India would lead to a better appreciation of anarchist thought, which tends to be widely misunderstood. These hopes have been fulfilled to some extent – Chomsky and other anarchist thinkers are much better known in India today than they were twenty years ago, and I think that his visits have contributed to this. Some leading left intellectuals in India, notably Arundhati Roy (herself strongly influenced by Chomsky), even seem to have anarchist leanings. But there has been some resistance too: in 2001, when Noam visited India again, the venue of one of his lectures had to be shifted from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to Delhi University at the last minute due to firm opposition from a few faculty members at JNU who seemed to think of him as some sort of “left deviationist”. Others had doubts of a different sort. In October 1997, my friend Milan Rai (who wrote an excellent book on Chomsky’s Politics) gave a seminar on Chomsky’s life and thought at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. He talked, among other things, about Chomsky’s propaganda model and the subversion of democracy. Ashis Nandy commented, “All this is fine, but why do we in India need Noam Chomsky?”. I am not sure whether he meant that Chomsky’s arguments did not apply in India, or that relying on them would reflect a colonized intellectual mindset. I felt that his question contained its own answer. For the bulk of his Indian audience, however, Noam Chomsky was mainly a famous scholar they had vaguely heard of. It did not take long for him to win the interest and affection of the Indian public. Soon after his arrival in India on 11 January 1996, his interviews received wide publicity and his lectures attracted larger and larger crowds. After a few days in Delhi he went to Kolkata in West Bengal, where the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) made up for the reluctance of some of their comrades at JNU by receiving Noam as a state guest. From there his lecture tour took him to Hyderabad, Chennai, and Thiruvananthapuram, in that order. This book, however, covers the Delhi lectures only. Noam was a very easy and accommodating guest. He was never worried about where we would put him up, what he would eat or what class he would be travelling. His main concern seemed to be to make good use of his time. When I sent him a draft schedule for his visit, he replied, “One lecture a day is not a full day for me”. So we packed more lectures and other engagements in his programme. On 17 January 1996, he gave three lectures in Hyderabad: one on “Intellectuals in the Emerging World Order” at 9.30 am, one on “Globalization and Media” at 3.15 pm and one on “American Foreign Policy” at 7 pm. When I apologized for the low (virtually nil) sight-seeing content of his India programme, Noam wrote back: “No problem... I’ll save that for some time when it’s more relaxed”. I guess that time is yet to come, if it ever does. I hasten to clarify that Noam did not come to India as a kind of preacher, and certainly not as a preacher of anarchism (none of his lectures were on that subject). He came to share his ideas as well as to learn. The discussion sessions that followed his lectures were always lively and often lasted well beyond the anticipated time (ample extracts are included in this book). In between these engagements, Noam had occasions to learn in other ways. For instance, in West Bengal he spent some time with a rural Gram Panchayat (village council), an experience he greatly appreciated. Alas, much of this happened outside Delhi and is not reflected in this book. ...

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— David S. D’Amato - Military Revolution and the New State Power

 

at 4/1/25 1:18pm

Author: David S. D’AmatoTitle: Military Revolution and the New State PowerSubtitle: The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)Date: March 30, 2025Source: Retrieved on March 30, 2025 from https://dsdamato.substack.com/p/military-revolution-and-the-new-state Introduction: the Empire and the Thirty Years’ War The dimensions of the modern state are remarkably little well understood given its dominant role in social and economic life today. As Peter Kropotkin argued in The State: Its Historic Role, to confuse society and the state “is to forget that for European nations the State is of recent origin—that it hardly dates from the sixteenth century.” Though he was writing before the dominant contemporary view of the Westphalian peace as ushering in the modern understanding of sovereignty, it was nonetheless clear to Kropotkin that something had changed, that the modern state did in fact represent a meaningful break from preceding forms of political government. The truth is that war transformed the nature of political power much more deeply than did Westphalian sovereignty, however construed. The fire and pressure that first fused capital and the modern state came from war. And throughout the modern age into the present day, the alliance between capital and the state remained on its firmest footing on matters of war and empire. War has been a highly lucrative business for private capital, and it has served the interests of the state by allowing it to extend its will—both geographically and against its own people. As the modern world develops, particularly during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), we find the growth of a different kind of sovereignty, forged not through carefully worded legal instruments, but through sheer centralized might—that is, through the power of a new, stronger kind of military. As we shall see, modern warfare changed the state in a number of measurable and direct ways, leading to the kind of consolidated, geographically contained power we associate with today’s states. Contemporaries discussed the Thirty Years’ War in terms that can only be described as apocalyptic, reflecting an “obsession with prophesy, conspiracy and end-times imagery.” The war’s generation of horrors connects several related trends at the center of which is a revolution in military capacity and practice whose transformation of weapons and warfare demanded an increase in state capacity fiscally and administratively. Though we will never have a fully accurate accounting of the death that reigned in Europe from 1618 to 1638, some 8 million died. This was a massive portion of the overall population, and large swaths of present-day Germany lost up to half of their people to fighting, wanton pillaging and murder, disease, and famine. In polling after World War II, Germans still placed the Thirty Years’ War ahead of both Nazism and the Black Death as Germany’s worst disaster. In the early seventeenth century, “the dynasty was, with few exceptions, more important in European diplomacy than the nation.” Powerful families like the Habsburgs in Austria and Spain and the Bourbons in France ruled over the Empire’s many principalities, the territories of which were often not contiguous. Partly due to the way that the princes of the Empire had passed their lands to their sons for centuries, territories were forever being divided and redivided. The German nation, such as it was, became more fragmented and decentralized over time. “Thus a population of twenty-one millions depended for its government on more than two thousand separate authorities.” Political power was layered and divided. There was no single, central place in which to look for it. “In the old world, religious loyalties counted for just as much, if not more, than loyalty to the state. Meanwhile, political borders sat awkwardly beside overlapping networks of personal fealty and obligation leftover from the medieval era. In the post-1648 world, the political sovereignty of the state would reign paramount.” Many historians have counseled caution against the extraction of deeper meanings from the chaos and destruction of the war. The historian C.V. Wedgwood, for example, writes, “Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its results, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” Wedgwood, who had an incredibly deep knowledge of the primary materials and preferred them to scholarship, adjudged the Thirty Years’ War “unnecessary” and said that it “need not have happened” and “settled nothing worth settling.” If it settled nothing and should never have happened, the war nonetheless contained fundamental alterations to the political order that remain with us today. By 1600, the Holy Roman Empire was home to at least 20 million people, in thousands of “semi-autonomous political units, many of them very small.” Many of these polities were geographically fragmented or divided between a number of territories. While the vast majority were small duchies, counties, and bishoprics with little power or political importance, there were several powerful kingdoms with power and populations rivaling those of the other major European kingdoms outside of the Empire. The Empire had a deep history and a venerable constitutional order. The bond between the Papacy and the Empire had centuries-deep history, arguably preceding the founding of the Empire itself and including even older episodes such as the Donation of Pepin, the Frankish king whose son, Charlemagne, would become the first emperor in the West since the fall of Rome. The emperor was chosen by seven electors, representing the most powerful crowns and territories in an empire that, while predominantly German, spanned by 1618 from its western boundaries in the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy to the Baltic coasts of present-day Poland in the northeast. The empire’s easternmost boundaries ran down through present-day Austria, dominated traditionally by the Habsburg dynasty, the Czech Republic (roughly corresponding with the Kingdom of Bohemia), and parts of Slovenia. By the time of the war, the Empire had a defined constitutional system, which had long required a level of autonomy for the electors and the various lesser crowns and estates. Within this system, the Pope looms large. Though the Vatican was far away, the power of the Church was real and tangible in the lives of the Empire’s peoples. Church officials were often members of important noble families, with great landholdings—often even whole principalities—and real-world political power. Perhaps one-seventh of the Empire fell under these ecclesiastical principalities, but this does not fully reflect the power or importance of the Church in its politics. There were dozens of clergymen in the Imperial Diet in 1618, and the electoral system itself prescribed that three of the seven prince-electors be senior members of the Catholic clergy, the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. ...

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— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 12.

 

at 4/1/25 5:37am

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 12.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: January 14, 1888Notes: Whole No. 116. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 1, 2025 from http://www.readliberty.org “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. “Compulsory Voting” is the title of an article in the “North American Review” and the author’s remedy for the evils now threatening our free and glorious institutions. “Those who have faith in anything court candid criticism of it,” says the Providence “People.” Yes, and such criticism they try to answer. This test makes it plain that Henry George has no faith in his land-value tax. A Chicago woman was dressing for her wedding when her dress caught fire and she was burned to death. Moral: have no wedding and marriage ceremonies. As to the unfortunate woman, a sudden death is always preferable to slow roasting over the consuming fire of the hell of marriage slavery. One of the most interesting features of Liberty hereafter will be Comrade Labadie’s contribution of “Cranky Notions.” He tells me that I must not hold him strictly to an appearance in each issue; but I may at least tell my readers that he has made me the Irishman’s promise to be regular, and, if he can’t be regular, to be as regular as he can. His first instalment will be found on the seventh page. His suggestive paragraph on the telegraph monopoly is especially rich in food for thought. When asked if he would accept the nomination of the United Labor party for the presidency, Henry George replied as all politicians do that he is “in the hands of his friends.” In other words, “Barkis is willing.” But his “friends” don’t seem to have much enthusiasm for their prophet. Rev. H. O. Pentecost, to whose admonition that principle, not policy, should govern the action of the labor party Mr. George, in the interval between an after-election and the opening of a new campaign, is “very sensitive,” favors the putting up of a candidate, “but not necessarily Mr. George.” Many of his followers call him a demagogue, and others are astonished to hear William Morris denounce him as a “traitor.” The way of the transgressor is hard, and George now pays the penalty of his shameful stand on the Chicago executions during the election campaign when he was not “sensitive” to the brave and noble attitude of his follower, Pentecost. James Parton touchingly describes the attractions of presidential campaigns in the “Forum.” The people, after all, decide for the right and the good, he says; and if his most cherished and strongest convictions were an issue in a campaign, and the people declared against them, he would begin to doubt them. The people generally, it seems, by some mysterious process, obtain wisdom and scientific information from a source entirely inaccessible to poor individual mortals, for whom it is impossible to form any valuable opinions except by study, mental work, and varied experiences. Mr. Parton contemptuously refers to the Protectionist school, and believes in free trade. Yet, though the arguments of the learned economists and able writers who stand for protection failed to convince Mr. Parton of the good of protection, he would begin to doubt his free trade theories if this mass of ignorant and illiterate people should vote for protection. In theology Mr. Parton is a freethinker, but in politics he is a slave of the blindest superstition. The debate at the last meeting of the Anarchists’ Club between Victor Yarros and E. M. White upon the Henry George remedy for social ills drew a large audience in spite of the severe storm. In opening in opposition to the land-value tax Mr. Yarros suffered from the disadvantage of having to devote a portion of his time to a statement of the position which he intended to attack. Nevertheless, in the time left him, he assailed it with thrusts so keen that Mr. White did not deem it prudent to try to parry them, but devoted nearly all his effort to combatting the free money theory, which was not at all in question at the time. Mr. Yarros, in his subsequent speeches, strove hard to hold his opponent to the matter in hand, but in vain; Mr. White remained possessed of the idea that he had been challenged to attack Anarchism instead of to defend the George theory of taxation. At the next meeting of the Club, to be held in Codman Hall, 176 Tremont Street, on Sunday, January 15, at half past two o’clock, H. M. Bearce will read a paper entitled, “Monopoly the Foundation of Usury.” Mr. Bearce has given a great deal of thought to the money question, and all that he has to say upon it is well worthy of attention. That is a very important point which Ernest Lesigne discusses in the “Socialistic Letter” printed in this number. The main strength of the argument for State Socialism has always resided in the claim, till lately undisputed, that the permanent tendency of progress in the production and distribution of wealth is in the direction of more and more complicated and costly processes, requiring greater and greater concentration of capital and labor. But, as M. Lesigne points out, the idea is beginning to dawn upon minds — there are scientists who even profess to demonstrate it by facts — that the tendency referred to is but a phase of progress, and one which will not endure. On the contrary, a reversal of it is confidently looked for. Processes are expected to become cheaper, more compact, and more easily manageable, until they shall again come within the capacity of individuals and small combinations. Such a reversal has already been experienced in the course taken by improvements in implements and materials of destruction. Military progress was for a long time toward the complex and the large scale, requiring immense armies and vast outlays. But the tendency of more recent discoveries and devices has been toward placing individuals on a par with armies by enabling them to wield powers which no aggregation of troops can withstand. Already, it is believed, Lieutenant Zalinski with his dynamite gun could shield any seaport against the entire British navy. With the supplanting of steam by electricity and other advances of which we know not, it seems more than likely that the constructive capacity of the individual will keep pace with his destructive. In that case what will become of State Socialism? ...

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— Joe Peabody - Peter Kropotkin, prophet of subsidiarity, inspired Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

 

at 3/31/25 4:28pm

Author: Joe PeabodyTitle: Peter Kropotkin, prophet of subsidiarity, inspired Dorothy Day and Peter MaurinDate: 1997Notes: This is the eleventh article in the series about the roots of the Catholic Worker movement, the saints and philosophers who influenced Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the movement’s development. It features Peter Kropotkin, whose works were known and studied by Peter and Dorothy even before they met.Source: Retrieved on March 31, 2025 from https://spanish.cjd.org/1997/11/01/peter-kropotkin-profeta-de-subsidiaridad-inspiro-a-dorothy-day-y-peter-maurin/# More than ten years ago, Marcos and Luisa Zwick gave a presentation to an ecumenical group of church people who formed a committee to distribute funds that had been raised to help the destitute. The diocese really wanted us to receive a portion of these funds since the majority of the funds had been raised in Catholic parishes. Trying to describe Casa Juan Diego, Marcos spoke about the Catholic Worker values of voluntary poverty and pacifism, but he made a glaring error when he mentioned that a core Catholic Worker value was anarchism. People gasped! The Catholic representative who supported giving us the money fell off his chair! “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” What we meant was that Casa Juan Diego is a voluntary, non-bureaucratic organization where Catholics exercise their freedom to work without pay to better serve the poor. That was what anarchism meant. Needless to say, they gave us some money, but it took a long time for the Catholic representative to recover. The founders of the Catholic Worker preferred to use the word personalism rather than anarchism because of the confusion between the word anarchy and chaos. As early as 1913, Dorothy Day, still very young, had read Kropotkin. She and Peter Maurin had been together for twenty years, and she had no explicit religious faith. However, like Maurin, she was drawn to Kropotkin and his vision of how society could be reorganized to eliminate the injustice of wage slavery. She described Kropotkin’s influence on her in her autobiography, The Long Solitude: “Kropotkin especially brought to my mind the condition of the poor, the working people. Although my only experience of the destitute was in books, the very fact that The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) was about Chicago, where I live, whose streets I walk, made me feel that from then on my life would be intertwined with theirs, their interests would be mine; I had received a calling, a vocation, a direction for my life.” Dorothy Day later described in The Long Solitude (Madrid: Editorial Sal Terrae) what the Catholic Worker movement had in mind when it adopted many of the ideas of Peter Kropotkin, who was known as an anarchist: “Kropotkin very much wanted the same kind of social origin that Father Vincent McNabb, the Dominican preacher, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and other distributives favored, though they would have been horrified to hear the word anarchist, thinking it synonymous with chaos, not self-government as Proudhon defined it. Distributism is the English term for a society in which man has enough of this world’s goods to enable him to lead a good life. Other words have been used to describe this theory: mutualism, federalism, pluralism, regionalism; but anarchism—the word first used as a taunt by its Marxist opponents—best brings to mind the tension that always exists between the concept of authority and liberty that haunts man until now.” Peter Kropotkin was born on December 21, 1842, in Moscow. His direct descent from the tsars of the old Rurik dynasty meant that he held the title of prince. He led a life of privilege and security from birth, pursuing a military career in obedience to his father, although Kropotkin’s true interests lay in science, especially geography. In Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin recounts that his recognition of social injustice began in his childhood. He witnessed the mistreatment of family servants and heard of the truly brutal practices common among the nobility. Peter Kropotkin chose to be assigned to an army regiment in Siberia after military school. He spent five years as an officer, during which time he was allowed to explore unknown parts of the Sino-Russian border and conduct geographical research. He already showed little or no concern for seeking conventional success or a place in the political system. He also demonstrated an absolute faith in the basic goodness of ordinary people—a quality that would make his ideas attractive to Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. He developed many of his social theories by studying medieval village communities in Russia. He also developed a close relationship with the members of the Swiss watchmaking cooperative, which was organized in a non-authoritarian structure. Dorothy Day said in The Long Solitude that “He lived and worked so closely with villagers and artisans that his writings were practical manuals.” His books and pamphlets made him the best-known and most respected anarchist by the end of the century. From 1880 to 1917, Kropotkin lived in London. Dorothy Day recounted that, “Kropotkin and Tolstoy, the modern proponents of anarchism, were sincere and peaceful men. Kropotkin’s classic book, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1898. After the Russian Revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia and, revered by workers and schoolchildren, lived in a provincial town outside Moscow until his early twenties. He in no way sympathized with the revolution, which had begun a dictatorship in the name of the proletariat, which would accomplish by terrorist force what Kropotkin sought to achieve through brotherly love.” ...

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— Pierre Ramus - Francisco Ferrer

 

at 3/31/25 3:13pm

Author: Pierre RamusTitle: Francisco FerrerSubtitle: The Modern SchoolSource: Retrieved on March 31, 2025 from https://www.anarchismus.at/anarchistische-klassiker/pierre-ramus/6344-ramus-francisco-ferrer-die-moderne-schule The Modern School The “Escuela Moderna,” which Ferrer opened in Barcelona in August 1901, was not the first of its kind in Spain. The organized freethinker movement itself had long recognized the urgent need to counter religious superstition and its pernicious consequences through rationalist and non-ecclesiastical schools. As early as 1885, the non-ecclesiastical school “La Verdad” (The Truth) was founded in San Felice de Guipolo. It was the best-equipped school in the entire city and was attended by a large number of students. In 1888, the freethinker association “The Friends of Progress” established a similar school in Madrid. The association’s statutes stated its primary purpose as “The creation and defense of non-ecclesiastical schools for boys and girls with all necessary classes and grades.” Sixty Spanish freethinkers’ associations were represented at the International Freethinkers’ Congress in 1889, and the report read out shows that they saw their primary task as the fight for non-church education. Several of these associations maintain non-church schools, and their aim is to exert their influence to ensure that religious instruction is completely eliminated from all elementary schools. This was the atmosphere and sentiment regarding religion in schools during the few years of experimentation and preparation before the founding of the “Escuela Moderna.” During all this time, groups of advanced thinkers—socialists, anarchists, freethinkers, syndicalists, and co-operatives—had collected and pooled their funds, formed their joint committees, founded schools, purchased teaching materials, and rented premises to free themselves and their children from ignorance, superstition, and spiritual slavery. They were determined to do for themselves what the government would not do for them. And when Ferrer set about organizing the efforts of the anti-clerical schools in 1901, providing them with new textbooks, and raising their teaching to the highest standards of modern pedagogy, this was a most severe blow to the forces of religious superstition and clerical domination. The intellectual ground was thus well prepared for the seeds sown by Ferrer’s Modern School in Barcelona. His great merit lay not only in having given the movement a new lease of life, but primarily in devoting his enthusiasm, his wealth, and his organizational talent to the task of ripening the seeds already sown, perfecting teaching methods, and providing the schools with a rich and diverse range of textbooks. Ferrer’s Modern School was not the first of its kind, but it was certainly the most vibrant of all non-ecclesiastical schools in Spain. The first school founded in Barcelona soon multiplied, its influence spread, and by 1906, there were already sixty schools based on its model in Catalonia and elsewhere. Let us now consider the basic principles of Ferrer’s aspirations and their practical implementation. In the manifesto that Ferrer issued on the occasion of the opening of the first school in Barcelona, he expressed his ideas as follows: “The real question for us is to use the school as the most effective means to achieve the complete spiritual, intellectual, and economic emancipation of the working class. If we all agree that the workers, or rather, all of humanity, can expect nothing from any god or any supernatural power, can we replace this power with another, such as the state? No, the emancipation of the proletariat can only be the direct and self-conscious work of the working class itself, of its will to learn and to know. If the working people remain ignorant, they will always remain in bondage to the church or the state, i.e., to capitalism, which represents these two powers. If, on the contrary, they draw their strength from reason and knowledge, their well-understood interest will soon lead them to put an end to exploitation so that the worker can take the fate of humanity into their own hands. Therefore, in our opinion, the most important thing is to enable the working class to understand these truths. Let us establish a system of education through which the child can quickly and easily learn the origin of scientific inequality, religious lies, pernicious patriotism, and the long-standing customs in the family and elsewhere that keep them in slavery. It is not the state, the expression of the will of an exploitative minority, that can help us achieve this goal. To believe this would be the most pernicious madness. If you want good merchants, skilled accountants, capable civil servants—in a word, people who think only of securing their own future without concern for others—then turn to the state, to the chambers of commerce, to all patriotic clubs and societies. But if you want to prepare a future of brotherhood, peace, and happiness for all—as you must want! — then turn to yourselves, to those who suffer under the existing system, and establish schools like ours, where you can teach all the truths that humanity has acquired.” ...

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— Pierre Ramus - Learn Esperanto!

 

at 3/31/25 2:55pm

Author: Pierre RamusTitle: Learn Esperanto!Date: 1907Source: Retrieved on March 31, 2025 from https://www.anarchismus.at/anarchistische-klassiker/pierre-ramus/7173-pierre-ramus-lernt-esperanto Doing one thing doesn’t mean leaving the other! And it’s very easy for every comrade to practice their native language, to give it that individual strength that truly does justice to the expression of their personality, to enhance its formal beauty—and at the same time to be a good Esperantist. About nine months ago, Landauer’s statements would have met with my unconditional approval. I advocated them myself back then, using the same logic and the same arguments. And this logic of mine—notoriously insidious!—was strengthened and significantly enhanced by reading an article by Max Nettlau in the London newspaper “Freedom” entitled “An Anarchist’s View of Esperanto.” There, too, the same claims were made, denying Esperanto any deeper intimacy and potential for internalization—just as Landauer does, as I have done, as countless others still do. Nevertheless, we were wrong; At least I, who studied Esperanto very cursorily and was only trying to acquire something like the ability to read the language, must admit this today. And the arguments I used, and which Landauer is now citing again, have only the deceptive appearance of correctness. In truth, we deceive ourselves about their soundness and completely fail to recognize and overlook the fact that the thing we have seemingly refuted has already demonstrated its vitality and thus its legitimacy through massive evidence, and has already undergone so many stages of development, perfection and improvement, that it is quite impossible that Esperanto could ever disappear again. I am happy to admit that from a certain aesthetic standpoint, I must agree with Comrade L. But aesthetics plays a conceivably minor role in the questions of daily hardship and its confusion, for which, and thus for the overcoming of which, Esperanto was created. And don’t be alarmed by the little word “created,” compared to which Landauer’s use seems far prettier and only seemingly more natural. For it only emphasizes half the point when I say that our languages are something “grown,” or something that has become, not something made. In any case, the fact is that this growth signifies their creation and creation, unless one wants to view this growth as something purely mechanical, which Landauer does not. And in such a sense, Esperanto, too, is something “grown,” something that grew and emerged because it meets very eminent needs and that, continuing to grow in the flow of its development of use, will achieve a future, and thus a past. After all, everything has grown, gradually become, but nothing that wasn’t made simultaneously; the action provides the impetus, development and becoming follow after it. Even existing languages have an infinite amount of madeness in them! Esperantists have never made it their mission to abolish or obliterate the differences between languages, all that wonderful diversity that has emerged from millennia of development and that creates the charm of life, the “splendid gestures” of different nations, expressing their passions and dispositions in colorful diversity. Comrade Landauer, Esperantists have always emphasized that Esperanto is only an auxiliary language for everyday use and the most necessary intellectual communication, in short, that it may be used precisely for the “crudeness, trivialities, and ordinariness” of life—and unfortunately, life consists largely of precisely such inadequacies. But if you believe that Esperanto is also misleading and unsuitable because different nations think and therefore speak in their own specific national idiosyncrasies, then you have expressed a profound truth, which Mauthner, in particular, vividly points out in his “Critique of Language.” I by no means deny the correctness of this assertion, but I would like to assert that it applies not only to Esperanto, but to every language, that the fatality of the language of even one and the same people—of course, we can only imagine such a people philosophically—is that it is spoken by individuals who, thanks to their varying hereditary influences and the gradual differences in their sensory and psychological impressionability, also only understand each other misunderstandings and can never fully understand each other. Nevertheless, just as the common national language allows individuals of different dispositions to communicate on the general questions of their existence, Esperanto also allows, or rather, enables, this among individuals of different nations. Its development is not yet foreseeable, and with each introduction into wider and wider circles, it gains such elements of flexibility, literal meaning, and generalization of the self-evident—and this is what language actually means to us—that its future evolution becomes a matter of assurance. Certainly: let us acquire all that beautiful clarity and richness of language that our classics have left us as a sublime legacy. But let us also enrich it! And the possibility of going to a foreign land and, at the moment of my arrival, calling out a few mutual, heartfelt words to those who are no longer “foreigners,” of being able to speak with them immediately about the necessities and needs of my personality—not only does none of the existing national languages offer this possibility to the proletarian, but for the newcomer, its realization means the expansion of their intellectual horizons on the most significant scale, an immediate, rapidly acquired sharpness of observation, which can also have a retroactive effect on their proficiency in their mother tongue. Esperanto is the everyday, necessary practice of exchanging ideas; Esperanto can become that broad linguistic stream on whose back all the cultural elements of the various nations can be brought reciprocally and in an internationalizing way to the diverse shores and coasts of their homeland.

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— Anonymous - Tolstoy’s Christian Anarchism

 

at 3/31/25 2:47pm

Author: AnonymousTitle: Tolstoy’s Christian AnarchismSubtitle: On the 100th anniversary of Leo Tolstoy’s deathDate: 2010Source: Retrieved on March 31, 2025 from https://www.anarchismus.at/anarchistische-klassiker/leo-tolstoi/6823-tolstois-christlicher-anarchismus According to the Julian calendar (which was still valid in Russia until February 14, 1918), Lev (Leo) Nikolayevich Tolstoy died on November 7, 1910, according to the Gregorian calendar, at the Astapovo railway station (since 1918 Lev Tolstoy) at the age of 82. This is important to know, because various biographies cite either one or the other date of death. According to his own account, Tolstoy had a very happy childhood, then from his entry in 1844 at the age of 16 into Kazan University, to study oriental languages, then law, and in 1847 to his death, he had a very eventful life: He incurred gambling debts, borrowed heavily, fled from his creditors into the military, took part in the suppression of an uprising of Caucasian mountain peoples (e.g. Chechens), as well as in the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856, then resigned, returned to his inherited estate Yasnaya Polyana, where he had been born into a family of Russian nobility, built a school there for the children of his serfs (there were four such school experiments on his estate), undertook two trips to Europe, made a personal acquaintance with Proudhon and made a name for himself as a great writer, participated in the so-called peasant emancipation (abolition of serfdom), he had a rather unhappy marriage, turned to religious topics, clashed with the Orthodox Church, the Tsarist state, and the feudal-bourgeois society into which he was born and from which he strove to break free, refused the Nobel Prize intended for him in 1901, was excommunicated by the Church in the same year (which is why he was not allowed to be buried in any cemetery), and spoke out against the death penalty very early on after witnessing a guillotine execution in Paris. This execution was so abhorrent to him that he stated in a letter that he would never again serve any government anywhere. In his later years, although once a passionate hunter himself, he turned against hunting game and slaughtering animals and advocated an exclusively vegetarian diet. He wanted to leave all his possessions, including his works, to the Russian people in his will, but the notary prevented this, citing the fact that the law did not allow for the transfer of his property to the public. Tolstoy was considered not only an anti-authoritarian educator, an outstanding writer, and ultimately a preacher of a non-church-based Christianity based on reason and absolute non-violence, but – especially for at least the last twenty years of his life – also an anarchist, although he never described himself as such. Although he corresponded very diligently with Kropotkin (whom he never met personally), he otherwise kept his distance from the anarchist movement because the majority of the movement did not share his fundamental non-violence. Tolstoy’s anarchism is quite easy to identify: Due to his preoccupation with religious questions, which began in 1879, he was guided by Christian values, primarily by the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 5–7), which was written about 40 to 50 years after Jesus’ death. Thus, it is questionable whether this Gospel faithfully reproduced the aforementioned sermon. However, the theological community may quarrel about that. In any case, this was irrelevant to Tolstoy; he guided himself exclusively by the biblical text and, in doing so, made the discovery, contrary to all Christian church dogma, that the text does not refer to an afterlife after death, but rather promises a redemption (one could also say liberation) of humanity in the present. It does not say “Blessed are those who...”, but rather “Blessed are those who...”. The text becomes more understandable as a very early liberation theology document if the word “blessed” is replaced with “blessed is he” (which the original Greek text certainly allows as a possible translation). From this Sermon on the Mount, which is considered the core of Christian doctrine, Tolstoy accordingly derived a “Kingdom of God on Earth” as a human society in which there would be no private property (which Tolstoy, like Proudhon, viewed as a fundamental evil), but only communal property. For the earth’s riches were created for all, not just for a privileged few. These views on the earth’s riches were by no means new in Tolstoy’s time; they can already be found in some so-called Church Fathers of the 4th century AD (e.g., Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom of Antioch). For Tolstoy, his concept of the “Kingdom of God” was associated with a path that leads humanity out of tyranny, slavery, oppression, and domination. This “Kingdom of God on Earth,” to which human rule is supposedly alien, thus also knows no wars or other forms of violence. In his religious-critical treatise “The Kingdom of God is Within You!” (based on an almost identical, alleged saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke [Luke 17:21]), he developed his religious-political principles: religion is a matter of reason, from which the law of love and mutual aid follows. And this can only be achieved on the basis of strict non-violence. Instead of what he considered a violent revolution, Tolstoy focused on a pursuit of individual perfection. ...

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— Pierre Ramus - Leo Tolstoy as a thinker and revolutionary of anarchism

 

at 3/31/25 2:34pm

Author: Pierre RamusTitle: Leo Tolstoy as a thinker and revolutionary of anarchismDate: 1920Source: Retrieved on March 31, 2025 from https://www.anarchismus.at/anarchistische-klassiker/pierre-ramus/6813-pierre-ramus-leo-tolstoi-als-denker-und-revolutionaer-des-anarchismus Considering Leo Tolstoy and his anarchist teachings and worldview at the present time, in a world shaken by significant stages of political and social revolution, amounts to a fundamental and decisive examination of his views, but also to a review of one’s own understanding of goals and practical activities. The World War and the period following it overthrew and eliminated much that had previously been untested, the recognition or rejection of which had been theoretical on both sides. Social and economic laws of development, ideological postulates, the labor movement in its manifold forms, aspirations, and expectations—all these have had the potential for revelation, and it is no longer difficult to assess their usefulness and correctness. But also the attitude of individual people, the principles and thoughts and elements of will that uplift or depress them—in short, all those peculiar conscious processes that manifest themselves in the individual at moments of greatest significance—these too have had, and still have, the opportunity for manifestation. To what extent have you withstood the tremendous event of the World War, this touchstone for nations and continents in their sociological, political, and economic nature? To what extent have the means and methods of action following the (...) teachings proven effective? And to what extent has the effectiveness and activity of the social idea and its embodiments in society been demonstrated, creating new things, displacing the old, and liberating and gratifying both mankind and society? If today, ten years after Tolstoy’s death, since which so much has happened and can never be undone, we consider his teachings in the light of events, taking stock of his will and aspirations alongside the events that have taken place, then the figure of the great spiritual leader of Yasnaya Polyana rises to such gigantic proportions that, if we are able to appreciate Leo Tolstoy’s significance for human culture, we find ourselves almost overwhelmed by the immense contours of the spiritual sky that Tolstoy occupies. It should not be considered a banal exaggeration when I say: It is thanks to Tolstoy alone that anarchism still rises as a shining tower of human culture, offering a goal of salvation, a liberating ideal, and a blissful fulfillment of the present to all the oppressed, all the exploited, and all those crushed by political, clerical-theological, and economic exploitation. It is only to Tolstoy’s teachings that we owe the invincibility and ever-flaming triumph of the idea of anarchy over the state, militarism, war, and revolutionary rhetoric. From the womb of the modern labor movement, two wings have emerged that set themselves the goal of abolishing the existing system. These two strands of socialist thought—whose earlier stages of evolution we will disregard entirely—can be called, in succinct terms, social democracy and anarchism. At its cradle stands Leo Tolstoy, born on September 9, 1828. He thus experienced the modern labor movement, the intellectual development of socialism and anarchism, almost more than another glorious, luminous spirit of humanity: Peter Kropotkin. In his prime, Tolstoy met Proudhon, and as a struggling man, inwardly driven by the fervor of ceaseless searching, the various metamorphoses of the proletarian movement passed him by. Today, this phase of the socialist movement, which began in the 1830s, allowed itself to be transformed into the precursor to bourgeois democracy and was naturally shamefully betrayed by it, which then temporarily placed the power of the state in the hands of the Parisian proletariat and its socialist democracy, made a new start in 1864, crystallized, but only relapsed into the same old mistakes. Today, this phase, which lasted until 1914, is dead and gone, and its aftereffects, like its epigones, leave behind only the same disappointment as the former one; they must remain just as barren for human liberation as this entire era, which has sunk in the sea of blood of the World War and the international dismemberment of peoples. In this sea of blood, madness, and nationalist-militaristic idiocy, three ideas in particular have been lost, which, in their entirety, can best be expressed by the title: bankruptcy, the complete self-destruction of Marxism. But quite apart from its dogmatic doctrinal structure, the distinctive features of the collapse of the social movement as such are the collapse of the belief that the proletariat would be united into an international unity through the labor movement; the collapse of the belief that a new cultural and spiritual conception, that of socialism and humanity, had so overwhelmingly taken hold of the proletarian psyche as to render it incapable of war; and finally, the collapse of the belief that the proletariat, through capitalism and the state—that is, its essential economic and political conditions—would be led to embrace revolution rather than allow itself to be used as an international sacrificial victim for war purposes, preferring to proclaim political or social revolution. ...

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