Here’s Juan Cole, Informed Comment 2011-08-12: Paul, Santorum and the Sixth War (on Iran):^[1]

A significant stream within [Right-wing] libertarianism theorizes war as the ultimate in this racket, whereby some companies use government to throw enormous sums to themselves by waging wars abroad and invoking patriotic themes. This analysis is remarkably similar to that of Left anarchists such as Noam Chomsky.

The difference is that for anarcho-syndicalists like Chomsky, the good guys of history are the workers and ordinary folk, whereas for Libertarians, it is entrepreneurs. Both theories depend on a naive reading of social interest. Right anarchists seem not to be able to perceive that without government, corporations would reduce us all to living in company towns on bad wages and would constantly be purveying to us bad banking, tainted food, dangerous drugs, etc. I mean, they behave that way when they can get away with it even when there is supposed government oversight, usually by capturing the government oversight agency that should be regulating them and then defanging it (e.g. BP and the Minerals Management Service). On the environment, private companies would never ever curb emissions without government intervention because of the problem of the commons. (Tellingly, Ron Paul calls global climate change a "hoax.")

And, what makes the Libertarians think that if there were no governments or only weak governments, the corporations would not just wage the wars themselves? The East India Companies of Britain and the Netherlands behaved that way. India was not conquered by the British government, but by the East India Company. Likewise what is now Indonesia was a project of the Dutch East India Company. Libertarians have difficulty imagining warmongering corporations who pursue war all on their own without any government involvement.

And below, in comments on the post:

The theory that big corporations exist only because of government, and that monopoly capitalism is a result of government, is wrong. In fact, it is so obviously wrong and ahistorical (the biggest corporations and the strongest monopolies have occurred in the most laissez-faire societies) that it bewilders me how intelligent people ever came to believe it.

Well, you know, when left-libertarians get into arguments with progressives about this sort of thing, and we point out that, historically speaking, American-style capitalism did not really arise in anything resembling a free market — that there never has been anything resembling a free market — and when we point to the actual history of regulatory capture, legal monopoly, state subsidy, government dependence, etc. that historically lies behind commercial empires like the East India Companies (government-chartered and government-protected monopolies), British Petroleum (until recently a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdom), Standard Oil and its descendents, Ma Bell and its descendents, General Electric, J.P Morgan-Chase, Bank of America, General Motors, etc. etc. etc. — and which created and sustained the family fortuens of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Goulds, ibn-Sauds, et al. — the response to this discussion of the historical sources of actually-existing capitalism is always met by a purely hypothetical alternative history, in which, it is alleged, such titanic concentrations of wealth, even though they actually arose in a system of privilege that had nothing to do with free markets, would still have arisen and maintained themselves just as well under purely hypothetical conditions of laissez-faire, even without all the concentrating, insulating, and subsidizing efforts that the manorial and corporate states have so energetically made on their behalf. If this claim is argued for at all, it is not argued for historically, since, of course, there are no historical examples of it ever having happened. It is instead argued for apriori, based on well, why wouldn’t they sorts of appeals to the nastiness of businessmen^[2], and the occasional reference to ahistorical hypotheticals or game-theoretic models, like Garret Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons^[3] Then left-libertarians are accused of being naive.

But if we respond to this hypothetical speculation by adding on, alongside the history we have already discussed, some more general, apriori economic reasons to believe that stable monopolies and cartels cannot maintain themselves without government privilege, that freed markets would tend to dissipate concentrated fortunes, and that they would systematically contain and undermine, rather than entrenching, monopolies and cartels, then we are accused of utopian theorizing, and told that our view of markets is ahistorical.

Apparently we can’t win. Maybe that’s the point; but I think a rhetorical victory that actually engaged with the historical arguments being offered, or with the apriori arguments being offered, rather than simply waving them off as either nonexistent or obviously beneath the notice of intelligent people, might be a more satisfying achievement.

1. ^[1]Cole’s post is, structurally speaking, a post about how Juan Cole agrees with Ron Paul, and disagrees with Rick Santorum’s belligerent idiocy, on Iran. But Juan Cole cannot simply write a post about how he agrees with Ron Paul, just like that. So instead he spends about a third of the post talking about how he thinks that Right-wing libertarianism is a lot of rubbish with a dangerously naive view of corporate power. Which is not in an of itself a problem — right-wing libertarianism is a lot of rubbish with a dangerously naive view of corporate power. And I certainly have nothing against criticizing Chairman Ron’s version of it. But if your criticism of Ron Paul is based on the assertion that he is a Right anarchist — and that what makes him an anarchist is that he [wants] the least government possible then you are about to say something that has probably nothing really to do with, and certainly is not an accurate representation of either Ron Paul or Anarchism. And if you think that Ron Paul is an example of a Right anarchist, and Noam Chomsky is the best example you can think up for a Left anarchist, then I must gently suggest that you are talking outside of your area of expertise.↩
2. ^[2]As if a freed market meant nothing more than that businessmen will act however they please — as if there were no other social forces that could possibly be activated within a freed market.↩
3. ^[3]There is actually quite a lot of good economic literature demonstrating how and why real-world common-pool resources don’t simply get obliterated, as Hardin predicts they must be, in the absence of individualized ownership or top-down legal regulation. See for example the work of the Ostroms.↩

Hey y’ALL,

So, this is just a brief note — a sort of placeholder — to mention that July 2011’s new Market Anarchy and Anarchist Classics Series booklets (No. 21 and No. 9, respectively) were finished on time and mailed out to subscribers on July 27. The official announcement has been delayed because the end of July also happened to be the exact time at which I, and with me the Alliance of the Libertarian Left Distro, went on a cross-country move from Las Vegas, Nevada to Auburn, Alabama. L. and I arrived safely in Alabama and we are in the process of getting settled in, but my print shop, the advance copies I’d already prepared, and all the rest of my office are not arriving for about a week. So, in the meantime, here’s a preview of what will soon be up for orders and available to the general public through the Distro website. Enjoy!

Coming Soon to an ALL Distro (Virtually) Near You…

Market Anarchy #21: Market Anarchy vs. Corporate Power or: “The Attitude of Anarchism Toward Industrial Combinations,” by Benjamin Tucker (1899)

Anarchist Classics Series #9: Problems of Anarchism: Property, Labor & Competition selected articles by William Bailie (1893)

See you all again when the dust settles….

An official announcement and links for non-subscribers to order the new booklets will be up in about a week.

tl;dr. Two beautiful new booklets are available for ordering to-day from the ALL Distro — this month’s Market Anarchy, with an article on truly public property — public property, that is, without state control — and this month’s Anarchist Classic, with a Spencerian-Mutualist take on the Economics of Anarchy, by the insurrectionary mutualist Dyer D. Lum. You can get one free sample copy of either series (or both) to check out, if you’re considering a monthly subscription for individual copies or monthly packs to distribute in the radical space of your choice. Sound good? Contact me for details.

Scatter tracts, like raindrops, over the land….

–William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, March 1831.

To-day, I am happy to announce this month’s two additions to the Alliance of the Libertarian Left Artwork & Agitprop Distro. They debuted on Saturday at this year’s Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair, and now, gentle reader, they come to you. Issue #20 (June 2011) of the monthly Market Anarchy Zine Series is a formulation by Roderick Long, on the right to public property in a stateless society. Issue #8 of the Anarchist Classics Zine Series is an edition of Dyer D. Lum’s The Economics of Anarchy, a fascinating Spencerian-Mutualist account of ownership and labor in a free society.

Here we are:

Market Anarchy #20 (Jun’11). Reclaim the Commons! Public Property Without the State Roderick T. Long (1998)

An individualist anarchist analysis and defense of rights to public property — not property that belongs to government, but property that belongs to the public — you and me and our neighbors. Libertarians often assume that a free society will be one in which all (or nearly all) property is private…. To most people, !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;public property' means !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;government property.' As an anarchist, I do not advocate government property of any sort. But this is not the only kind of public property. Throughout history, legal doctrine has recognized, alongside property owned by the the public as organized into a state and represented by government officials, an additional category of property owned by the unorganized public. This was property that the public at large was deemed to have a right of access to, but without any presumption that government would be involved in the matter at all. It is public property in this sense that I am defending…. It is true that private property provides a protected sphere of free decision-making – for the property's owners. But what is the position of those who are not property owners? A system of exclusively private property certainly does not guarantee them !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;a place to stand.' Far from providing a sphere of independence, a society in which all property is private thus renders the propertyless completely dependent on those who own property…. It is true that users of public property face a somewhat greater risk from their fellow users than users of private property do. By the same token, however, public property allows more freedom. That is why the best option is a society that makes room for both public and private property. Those who place a high value on security, and are willing to put up with burdensome restrictions in order to get it, will be free to patronize private property, while those who seek self-expression, are averse to restrictions, and are willing to put up with more risk from others will likewise be free to patronize public property…. $1.25 for 1; 75¢/ea in bulk.

Anarchist Classics #8 (Jun’11). The Economics of Anarchy A Study of the Industrial Type Dyer D. Lum (1890)

I have repeatedly been asked to write a brief summary of the aims sought by Anarchists which could be read and discussed in the various clubs that are studying economic questions. With this end in view the following pages are submitted, trusting that they may be a help to those who are earnestly seeking the rationale of the Labor Question…. FREE EXCHANGE … would break the monopoly now possessed by currency, the instrument of exchange, and also could open full use of the possession of land…. Has the workman equal freedom to compete with the employer of labor? … But why not? Because behind the capitalist, as we now find him, privilege lends support which transforms the result of honest industry into a hideous Moloch standing with outstretched arms to receive as sacrificial victims the toilers who have made that capital possible…. Capital itself is man's best friend, the true social savior that opens the march of progress and that has transformed society from warlike to peaceful pursuits. But under the crucifying hands of legalization, where prerogative mocks at penury, its mission is thwarted and it becomes a ravenous beast…. Reliance upon militant measures, trying to curb indus­ trial discontent by legislative coercion, is reactionary in character. However disguised in twilight mixtures it is the spirit of the old regime seeking to dominate the new; as vain as seeking to check an exhaustless flow of water by damming the stream. The remedy cannot lie in enactments, in the organ­ization of systems, in return to simplicity of structure, for industrial civilization demands plasticity of forms … while organization, on the other hand, ever tends to rigidity…. Dyer Lum was among the most labor-oriented of the American mutualists, working actively as a labor organizer and maintaining close working ties with August Spies, Albert Parsons, and many of the other Chicago Communists — he actually took over publishing The Alarm after Parsons and the other Haymarket martyrs were hanged. Unlike Tucker, who officially rejected any concern with questions of ownership and employment, so long as workers were fully freed from monopolistic constraints on their bargaining power, Lum’s book is a defense of mutual enterprise and worker ownership. But he also explicitly rejects communism and defends private property and free exchange — which Lum approaches with a fascinating appropriation of Herbert Spencer’s distinction between the militant type and the industrial type of society, characterized respectively by violence, domination and rigidity, on the one hand; and peace, productivity, equality and plasticity on the other.[1] Lum is also notable as an insurrectionist — a sort of bomb throwing revolutionary Mutualist. There’s a common, and really grossly mistaken, stereotype that the Collectivist and Communist Anarchists in America were the revolutionaries, and the Individualists and the Mutualists were Philosophical Anarchists who had no immediate plan to overthrow government, and for the time being counseled only education and moral agitation.[2] But this is wrong, as a general thing,[3] and Lum in particular is a huge, obvious counterexample — a defender of revolutionary politics and of the Chicago martyrs, who smuggled the dynmite caps to the imprisoned Louis Lingg. In Economics the issue appears mostly in the background — with the occasional adversions to, e.g., the relationship between Garrison’s agitation and Brown’s insurrection — but it is approached directly in an extended discussion in the final chapter, a Digression on Methods. $2.00 for 1; $1.50/ea in bulk.

As I’ve mentioned in past months, both the Market Anarchy Zine Series and the new Anarchist Classics Zine Series have become regular monthly publications. One issue in each series is published every month. New issues are normally announced during the first week of each month, and mailed out during the third week of the month. (This month, as you can see, the announcement has been deferred in order to focus on preparing the new issues, and other wares, for the Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair. But we should be returning to our regular schedule in July.) You can order individual copies online or contact me to sign up for a regular subscription, either for personal reading or bulk orders for distributing, tabling, or stocking local infoshops and other radical spaces. If you’re considering subscribing, you can contact me to request a free sample copy for you to check out, compliments of the Distro; then, if you like it, continue the subscription for the rest of the year at the following rates:

Market Anarchy Zine Series
Delivered each month	Individuals	Bulk Distribution Packets
	$1.50/issue (= $18/year)	No. of copies !!!@@e2;153;2022; 80¢/issue (= N !!!@@e2;153;2022; $9.60/year)
Anarchist Classics Zine Series
Delivered each month	Individuals	Bulk Distribution Packets
	$2.25/issue (= $27/year)	No. of copies !!!@@e2;153;2022; $1.25/issue (= N !!!@@e2;153;2022; $15/year)

For details on all your options (including ready-to-print electronic versions, customization with local contact information, and discounts for quarterly shipments), see Market Anarchy Mailed Monthly.

Prices include shipping & handling costs. If you decide not to continue the subscription, the sample issue is yours to keep. Intrigued? Contact me forthwith and we’ll get something worked out.

That’s all for now. Next month, you can look forward to some free-market environmentalism and the long-lost problems of an individualist. Until then–read and enjoy!

See also:

• GT 2011-05-07: M@ Mailed Monthly (May 2011): Ideas and Letters, Natural Liberty and Artifical Scarcity
• GT 2011-04-21: M@ Mailed Monthly (April 2011): Five Theses and a Vindication
• GT 2011-03-31: Market Anarchy Mailed Monthly
• GT 2010-02-17: The present anarchy of our commerce: booklets and buttons for March 2010
• GT 2007-11-23: The present anarchy of our commerce: t-shirts

1. ^[1]His use of the Spencerian distinction, and especially his opposition of militant rigidity to industrial plasticity is, I think, importantly connected with the common Mutualist emphasis on the character of markets as spaces for social experimentation and discovery; as Lum writes, The remedy cannot lie in enactments, in the organization of systems, in return to simplicity of structure, for industrial civilization demands plasticity of forms which the law of equal freedom alone gives, while organization, on the other hand, ever tends to rigidity….↩
2. ^[2]In another, and even more grossly mistaken oversimplification, it is often claimed that the former, allegedly Communist and revolutionary, kind of Anarchism was mainly or exclusively European, or imported to America by European immigrants, while the latter, allegedly Mutualist and philosophical, was a native American tradition, which allegedly derived from peculiarly American traditions, which had little or nothing to do with the European insurrectionism, and which was fundamentally different because it grew in a different soil. It’s another topic for another day, but for now suffice it to say that this whole attempted dichotomy is a farrago of nonsense, promoted on the one hand by Communists, who intended to discredit Mutualism as conservative, quietist, parochial and outmoded; and by later defenders of Mutualism, especially during the mid-20th century, who attempted to defend the tradition, by dissociating it from the charges of foreignness and violence directed against all forms of Anarchism in an age of red-baiting and nationalism. But the Communists are wrong about Mutualism, and the would-be friends of Mutualism would have done better to push back against belligerently idiotic 100%-Americanism than to try to pander to it. The reality is far more complicated, and Lum is as good a place as any to start if you want to get into it.↩
3. ^[3]Tucker counseled more or less strict adherence to non-violent forms of struggle, like rent strikes and tax resistance. But any observer of the 20th century should be aware that non-violent struggle is not the same thing as non-struggle. In any case, beyond Tucker, American individualists had a wide range of views. The authors of A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery and In Defense of Emma Goldmann and the Right of Appropriation would be very surprised to learn that they were philosophical Anarchists who foreswore any kind of revolutionizing or violence.↩

Received this morning in my inbox from a friend involved with Nevada Prison Watch. The solidarity e-mail campaign is from Change.org; the notice about the hunger strike comes from California Prison Focus, a member of Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity.

From: A. Parker
Subject: Please sign the petition to support the demands of the prison hunger strikers in Pelican Bay State Prison, California

Please sign the petition to support the demands of the prison hunger strikers in Pelican Bay State Prison, California, who will start an indefinite hungerstrike on July 1st.

http://www.change.org/petitions/support-prisoners-on-hunger-strike-at-pelican-bay-state-prison

Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison (California) are going on an indefinite hunger strike as of July 1, 2011 to protest the cruel and inhumane conditions of their imprisonment. The hunger strike was organized by prisoners in an unusual show of racial unity. The hunger strikers developed five core demands. Briefly they are:

1. Eliminate group punishments. Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This policy has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and to make conditions increasingly harsh.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Prisoners are accused of being active or inactive participants of prison gangs using false or highly dubious evidence, and are then sent to longterm isolation (SHU). They can escape these tortuous conditions only if they “debrief,” that is, provide information on gang activity. Debriefing produces false information (wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU, in an endless cycle) and can endanger the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to longterm solitary confinement. This bipartisan commission specifically recommended to make segregation a last resort and end conditions of isolation. Yet as of May 18, 2011, California kept 3,259 prisoners in SHUs and hundreds more in Administrative Segregation waiting for a SHU cell to open up. Some prisoners have been kept in isolation for more than thirty years.

4. Provide adequate food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food that do not conform to prison regulations. There is no accountability or independent quality control of meals.

5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates. The hunger strikers are pressing for opportunities to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities…. Currently these opportunities are routinely denied, even if the prisoners want to pay for correspondence courses themselves.

   Examples of privileges the prisoners want are: one phone call per week, and permission to have sweatsuits and watch caps. (Often warm clothing is denied, though the cells and exercise cage can be bitterly cold.) All of the privileges mentioned in the demands are already allowed at other SuperMax prisons (in the federal prison system and other states).

For more information and continuing updates, visit http://www.prisons.org/hungerstrike.htm

PETITION LETTER

Grant the 5 Core Demands of the Pelican Bay SHU Hunger Strikers

Dear Warden Lewis, Secretary Cate, and Governor Brown:

We support the prisoners on hunger strike in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of Pelican Bay State Prison and those in other units joining them. We strongly urge you to grant their five core demands as soon as possible.

[Your name]

• Broken windows in Vancouver. John, Blagnet.net (2011-06-17). (Linked Friday 2011-06-17.)

• Wrongful Convictions. Radley Balko, Radley Balko: Reason.com articles and blog posts. (2011-06-07). When Paul House was finally released from prison in 2008, he was a specter of the man who had been sentenced to death more than 22 years earlier. When I visit his home in Crossville, Tennessee, in March, House's mother Joyce, who has cared for him since his release, points… (Linked Friday 2011-06-17.)

• Eating Steak On Rare Occasions. Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes (2011-06-17). Paging Dr. Adams. Dr. Carol Adams, stat. (Linked Friday 2011-06-17.)

• On Bottom-Up Liberalism & Pity-Charity Liberalism. E.D. Kain, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen (2011-06-16). I've been thinking about bottom-up liberalism and pity-charity liberalism a lot lately, and the whole mess of ideas that swirl around between the two. Essentially, Mike Konczal thinks that growth plus safety nets is insufficient. Without a government fighting for full employment and increased worker bargaining rights, you get "pity-charity… (Linked Friday 2011-06-17.)