The Philosophy of Progress

“The Philosophy of Progress”

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“How then are things connected and engendered? How are beings produced and how do they disappear? How is society and nature transformed? Such is the sole object of science. The notion of Progress, carried into all the spheres of consciousness and the understanding, become the base of practical and speculative reason, must renew the entire system of human knowledge, purge the mind of its last prejudices, replace the constitutions and catechisms in social relations, teach to man all that he can legitimately know, do, hope and fear: the value of his ideas, the definition of his rights, the rule of his actions, the purpose of his existence . . . The theory of Progress is the railway of liberty.”

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LL1: The Unfinished Business of Liberty

“The Unfinished Business of Liberty”

Edited by Shawn P. Wilbur

“LEFTLIBERTY is a magazine—half serious zine, half one-man journal—dedicated to the broad, deep current of anarchist thought which is sometimes called “left libertarian,” and particularly to the anarchist mutualist tradition which traces its roots back to figures such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Josiah Warren, Joshua King Ingalls and William Batchelder Greene. Mutualism is arguably the oldest form of explicitly anarchist thought, taking its name from Proudhon,—the “property is theft” and “I am an anarchist” guy,—but it is hardly the best-known. Fifteen years ago, when I began to study mutualism seriously, I faced two major obstacles: first, many of the texts associated with the tradition were difficult to access, even for someone in academic circles; indeed, many key texts remained untranslated; and, second, I quickly learned that many of the attitudes and unconscious prejudices that I had picked up in the course of becoming an anarchist in the first place were impediments to understanding mutualism, which, in contemporary terms, occupies a kind of complicated middle ground between the mainstream of “social anarchism” and the various forms of “market anarchism” and radical libertarianism.”

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Equality: The Unknown Ideal

“Equality: The Unknown Ideal”

by Roderick T. Long

“We can now see how socioeconomic equality and legal equality both fall short of the radicalism of Lockean equality. For neither of those forms of equality calls into question the authority of those who administer the legal system; such administrators are merely required to ensure equality, of the relevant sort, among those administered. Thus socioeconomic equality, despite the bold claims of its adherents, does no more to challenge the existing power structure than does legal equality. Both forms of equality call upon that power structure to do certain things; but in so doing, they both assume, and indeed require, an inequality in authority between those who administer the legal framework and everybody else . . . The libertarian version of equality is not circumscribed in this way. As Locke sees, equality in authority entails denying to the legal system’s administrators — and thus to the legal system itself — any powers beyond those possessed by private citizens”

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Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law

“Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law”

by Joseph R. Peden

“Honor price was also essential in the workings of the surety system by which means all judgments of the brehons’ courts were enforced. Since law enforcement was not a function of the state or king in the Irish tuath, it was entirely dependent upon each party in an action or suit providing himself with sureties who would guarantee that the judgment of the brehon’s court would be honored. If a person was about to bring suit, he sought sureties to help him in persuading the defendant to submit to peaceful adjudication of the dispute; this might involve applying the law of distraint in which the plaintiff seized some movable property of the defendant and impounded it under lawful procedures until the defendant gave surety that he would submit to adjudication. If he refused to do so, the community would consider him an outlaw – and he and his property would lose the protection of the law.”

Dedicated to my friend Darian Worden, who introduced me to the joys of pagan folk metal.

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The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire

“The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire”

by Joseph Stromberg

“With interventionism and restrictionism, the best businessman is he who best knows how to influence in his interest the decisions of the organs of the state (in regard to tariffs, government subsidies or orders, advantageous import quotas, etc.) . . . . What formerly was regarded as a special trait of the munitions industry becomes in interventionist capitalism the general rule. Some have argued that, under such centralized corporate statism, innovation and founding of new enterprises can be so discouraged that, as Jacobs puts it, “there is nowhere to export the embarrassing superfluity of capital except abroad.” The structure of the economy limits domestic investment, thereby promoting aggressive capital export. Simultaneously, monopoly prices foster artificial “surpluses” of specific goods. As the American economy became systematically corporatist, a sense of crisis and stagnation, as well as a desire to further rationalize and perfect the system, strengthened the hand of those who wished to universalize the new political economy through world empire.”

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The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in America

“The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in America”

by Murray Rothbard

“Colonial America did not set out deliberately to be the land of the free. On the contrary, it began in a tangle of tyranny, special privilege, and vast land monopoly. Territories were carved out either as colonies subject directly to the English Crown, or as enormous land grabs for privileged companies or feudal proprietors. What defeated these despotic and feudal thrusts into the new territory was, at bottom, rather simple: the vastness of the fertile and uninhabited land that lay waiting to be settled. Not only relative freedom, but even outright anarchist institutions grew up early in the interstices between the organized, despotic English colonies.”

Cover picture suggested by Tennyson McCalla

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An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism

“An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: the not so wild, Wild West.”

by Terry L. Anderson & P.J. Hill

“From successive frontiers of our American history have developed needed customs, laws, and organizations. The era of fur-trading produced its hunters, its barter, and the great fur companies; on the mining frontier came the staked claims and the vigilance committees; the camp meeting and the circuit rider were heard on the religious outposts; on the margins of settlement the claim clubs protected the rights of the squatter farmers; on the ranchmen’s frontier the millions of cattle, the vast ranges, the ranches, and the cattle companies produced pools and local, district, territorial and national cattle associations.”

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Austrian & Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital

“Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis”

by Kevin Carson

“But if both facets of our understanding of the present system (that corporate capitalism is exploitative; and that its exploitation depends solely on the state) were sincerely held by libertarians of left and right, it could serve as the basis for an alliance against state capitalism. The Left must be made to understand that their proper grievance is not against private property (properly understood), or markets (in the sense of free exchange between equal, unprivileged producers), but with the state. The Right must be made to understand the extent to which Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and GM are parasitic outgrowths of the state, and not products of “good old American know-how” or “elbow grease.” If both sides are sincerely motivated primarily by an oppostion to statist coercion, rather than a reflexive sympathy for big business or aversion to market exchange, the potential exists for coexistence on the basis of something like Voltairine de Cleyre’s “anarchism without adjectives.” “

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Laws Of The Jungle

“Laws of the Jungle”

by Allen Thornton

“Anarchy will, of course, come, if not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then ten thousand years from now. The history of the world is the steady increase of wealth. The land and resources ultimately wind up in the hands of those who can produce the most wealth from them. It follows, logically, that the wealth destroying state will eventually fade into history. But for now, the government is a new toy that the people cannot stop playing with. It seems to them so simple, so easy, so logical to solve their problems with extorted money and threats of violence concealed behind the holiness of the state. But even now, in the last two hundred years, we see the beginnings of the attack on government itself. One day, the very idea of government will seem like an insane artifact of the past: witch burning, crusading, black slavery, prohibition. Then the people will look back and wonder at the nature of man. Like Macbeth they will say, “Can such things be, and overcome us like a summer’s cloud, without our special wonder?” “

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Chaos Theory: Two Essays On Market Anarchy

“Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy”

by Robert P Murphy

“Specialized firms would develop, offering high security analogs to the current jailhouse. However, the “jails” in market anarchy would compete with each other to attract criminals. Consider: No insurance company would vouch for a serial killer if he applied for a job at the local library, but they would deal with him if he agreed to live in a secure building under close scrutiny. … On the other hand, there would be no undue cruelty for the prisoners in such a system. … If they were, they’d simply switch to a different jail, just as travelers can switch hotels if they view the staff as discourteous.”

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