Posts filed under Misc

The Age of Bronze

As we approach the New Year, we naturally think of ends, and of beginnings; what has changed, and what we have lost. So hey, libertarians, let’s all get together and feel sorry about the golden age of Limited Government and Individual Liberty we have lost. Remember the ancient liberties that we all enjoyed only 60 years ago, back in the 1950s? Back when all military-age men were subject to the draft, people were being interrogated before a permanent committee of Congress over their political beliefs, the FBI was conducting massive illegal wiretapping, surveillance and disruption against nonviolent civil rights activists, the National Security Agency was established as a completely secret surveillance arm of the federal government, it was illegal for married or unmarried women to buy basic birth control, it was made illegal for anyone to buy any scheduled drug without a doctor’s prescription, government was conducting medical experiments on unwilling human subjects[1], Urban Renewal was demolishing the core of every major U.S. city to build government highways and housing projects, and massive community-wide immigration raids were terrorizing undocumented migrants throughout the Southwest.

Or like back in the 1940s when government spending was over 50% of GDP, nearly the entire consumer economy was subject to government rationing, Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps, and a secret government conspiracy was building an entire network of secret cities in order to build atomic bombs to drop on civilian centers.

Or like back in the 1930s when the entire institutional groundwork of the New Deal was being implemented, Roosevelt was making himself president-for-life, government attempted to seize all gold or silver bullion in private hands, the federal government first instituted the Drug War, Jim Crow was the law of the land, Congress created the INS, Jews fleeing the incipient Holocaust in Europe were being turned away by immigration authorities, and psychiatrists were using massive electric shocks or literally mutilating the brains of women and men confined to asylums.

Or like the 1920s when it was illegal to buy alcoholic drinks anywhere in the United States, tariff rates were nearly 40% on dutiable imports, Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered by the state of Massachusetts, the Invisible Empire Second Era Klan effectively took over the state governments of Colorado, Indiana, and Alabama, hundreds of black victims were massacred in race riots in Tulsa and Rosewood, when Congress created the Federal Radio Commission[2], the US Border Patrol, passed the Emergency [sic] Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, and the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the authority of the state to forcibly sterilize women deemed “feeble-minded” or “promiscuous” for eugenic purposes.

Or the 1910s, when the federal government seized control of foreign-owned companies to facilitate production of chemical weapons, imposed the first-ever use of federal conscription to fight an overseas war, invaded Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico[3], Russia, and Europe, passed criminal anarchy and criminal syndicalism statutes, tried and convicted hundreds of people for belonging to radical unions, imprisoned hundreds of people for protesting the draft during World War I (ordered by the President of the United States and upheld by the Supreme Court in one of its most radical anti-free-speech decisions), deported hundreds of people solely for holding anti-state political beliefs, the Mann Act made it illegal to “transport women across statelines for immoral purposes” [sic], the Colorado National Guard machine-gunned and burned alive striking miners and their families in order to break a UMWA organizing campaign, and Congress created the Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, the Espionage Act, and the Sedition Act.

Or maybe like the 1900s. … .

  1. [1] See also the biological and radiological experiments documented here, and the Guatemala syphilis experiment conducted from 1946-1948. ↩
  2. [2] Created in 1926; later converted into the Federal Communications Commission in 1934. ↩
  3. [3] In 1914, and then again in 1916-1917 ↩

Markets Not Capitalism on the Air!

Edited by Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson
Published by Minor Compositions

To-day (Thursday 12/12) at 9pm US/Eastern, 8pm US/Central time, my co-editor Gary Chartier will be appearing on the John Stossel show on Fox Business Network, to discuss our book, Markets Not Capitalism. We just got confirmation from the show that the segment would be airing tonight; here’s a blurb from the show’s blog:

MARKETS NOT CAPITALISM: Gary Chartier, co-editor of Markets Not Capitalism, says there’s actually a lot to hate about capitalism when the word suggests capitalists using political connections to get special privileges. . . .

Well, that’s not really quite the point of the book.[1] But of course we appreciate the chance to talk about some of the themes and to get the good word out.

Setcher DVRs. Markets Not Capitalism is coming to prime time.

WHO: Gary Chartier
WHAT: Prime-time interview on Markets Not Capitalism
WHEN: Thursday, 12 December 2013 9pm EST (8pm Central)
WHERE: John Stossel show, Fox Business News

  1. [1] Cf. illud, hoc, and Is this all just a semantic debate?, if’n you’re looking for a different sort of gloss on the point of the book. ↩

Shameless Self-promotion Sunday

It’s Sunday. Everybody get Shameless.

Lay it on me: What have you been up to lately? Got anything big coming up? Anything you’ve been working on? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about

Anarchist Communications.

Here’s some things that have come across my desk this week that I’ve been meaning to post a note about.

Publications.

  • Shawn P. Wilbur, La Frondeuse Issues #3 and #4. From Shawn Wilbur: The Black and Red Feminism zine has been reborn as La Frondeuse [The Troublemaker, or The Anti-Authoritarian.] The name is borrowed from one of Séverine’s collections. Issue 3 features works by Louise Michel, Paule Mink and Séverine. Issue 4 contains works by Jenny d’Héricourt under various pen-names. The name-change comes with a bit of fancy repackaging, and will be retroactive. . . . With just a little luck, the paper edition of La Frondeuse will become the first monthly subscription title from Corvus Editions, starting this fall….

  • Roderick Long, Three from The Liberator. From Roderick Long: William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator was the premier abolitionist journal of the antebellum u.s. I’ve just posted three pieces from The Liberator: an anti-voting piece by Garrison, an anti-slavery piece by Lysander Spooner, and a report on an 1858 reform convention.

  • Fair Use Repository, Now available: The Relation of Anarchism to Organization (1899), by Fred Schulder OK, this one’s by me, so the path of communication was a relatively short one. Still, check it out: a rare individualist anarchist pamphlet from Cleveland, Ohio, printed in 1899. By Fred Schulder, an individualist anarchist noticeably influenced by Tucker, Clarence Swartz, and Henry George.[1] From the Fair Use Blog: Schulder’s essay is, in any case, an interesting attempt at discussing the possibilities of consensual social organization, and the anti-social, anti-coordinative features of State force, from a framework based on Spencerian evolutionary theory. [More here.]

  • CAL Press, Modern Slavery #1: From CAL Press: . . . The first full issue of this journal has now taken half a decade to come to fruition. It’s been a struggle on many fronts to turn the original impulse and idea into reality. But from here on there’s no turning back and we refuse to be stopped! The Modern Slavery project is a direct successor to previous C.A.L. Press projects. These include the magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (published since 1980, and now produced by an independent collective since 2006), the North American Anarchist Review (published for a few years in the ’80s), the Alternative Press Review . . ., and the C.A.L. Press book publishing project . . . . The original idea for this new journal was to provide a space within the libertarian and anarchist milieu for the publication of some of the really important, critical and creative material that has too often fallen into the cracks between what will fit into the inadequate spaces available in libertarian periodicals and what has been publishable in book form. . . . The original concept for Modern Slavery included a roughly 200-page, perfect-bound oversize journal format oriented towards people who enjoy reading and who aren’t afraid to dive into longer texts that are exciting, intelligent and well-written. In order to remove any possibility or appearance of competition with the now separate and independent Anarchy magazine project, the intention was to avoid newsstand distribution, keep the graphic design simple, severely limit artwork and photos, and avoid publishing any material on the shorter side. The planned format was actually intended to be something not yet too far from what you’ll find in this first full issue. However, since the Anarchy collective has recently decided to end its newsstand distribution and shrink its circulation, Modern Slavery will instead seek (limited) newsstand distribution, include more complex graphic design and more artwork and photos, while attempting something more of a balance between longer and shorter contributions in future issues. The changes in direction will probably become more clear as future issues appear. Issue #1 includes articles by Paul Simons, François Gardyn, Henry David Thoreau, Ron Sakolsky, Voltairine de Cleyre, Massimo Passamani, Jason McQuinn, Émile Armand, and the first parts of serialized works by Karen Goaman, Wolfi Landstreicher, and Lang Gore.[2] [More here.]

CFPs.

  • InterOccupy: Science & Society Accepting Papers on Anarchism: Theory, Practice, Roots, Current Trends. From andrea @ InterOccupy: Science & Society is planning a special issue on the broad theme of anarchism, as appearing in both past and present-day political movements. . . . While we expect contributors to innovate and shape their papers according to specific interests and views, we encourage them to contact the Guest Editors (email parameters provided below), so that completeness of coverage can be achieved, and duplication avoided, to the greatest extent possible. We are looking for articles in the 7,000-8,000 word range. Projected publication is Spring 2014, so we would like to have manuscripts in hand by January 2013. Discussion about the project overall, and suggestions concerning content, should begin immediately. Note that, this being Science & Society, the top two suggested topics for contributions are, essentially, What is it that an understanding of Anarchism can contribute to the confirmation or theoretical development of Marxism? But there are a bunch of other topics that they’re throwing out for consideration in the CFP, and it may well turn out to be an interesting issue. (This being a CFP, whether it’s interesting for good, or for ill, is partly up to you….)

Events.

  1. [1] Oh well, you can’t have everything. —R.G. ↩
  2. [2] Also there’s an article by Bob Black, but oh well, you can’t have everything. —R.G. ↩

Keeping the Liberties of Some People Safe


One of the Mises Institute Daily Articles for Thursday was Gary Galles’s Keeping the Liberties of the People Safe, a short article about Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794), a pro-Independence member of the Continental Congress who later became an anti-Federalist in the debate over the United States Constitution. The body of the article itself mostly consists of a fragmentary list of pull-quotes about liberty, power, and government. But here’s the article summary (which you’ll see if you search for the article in Google, or if you read it in a feed reader):

Keeping the Liberties of the People Safe

Richard Henry Lee is best known for the June 7, 1776, motion calling for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain, which led to the Declaration of Independence. As a consistent advocate of liberty, he also opposed the Constitution.

As a consistent advocate of liberty, Richard Henry Lee also enslaved more than 60 men, women and children on the plantation he governed at Chantilly, Virginia.[1]

Here’s something — quoted approvingly by Gary Galles in the Mises Daily article — that the slave-driving hypocrite Richard Henry Lee wrote about liberty while he was living off the forced labor of dozens of captive black slaves:

[W]e ought not to lodge [powers] as evidently to give one order of men in the community undue advantages over others; or commit the many to the mercy, prudence, and moderation of the few.

Well, yeah.

See also:

  1. [1] Cf. J. Kent McGaughy (2004), Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: a portrait of an American revolutionary (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield), p. 61 ↩