Rad Geek People's Daily

Article posted 21 September 2013 Rad Geek Speaks: interview on Scratching By, Urban Homesteading, and Black-and-Red Markets, with John Bush of Rise Up Radio posted 8pm

Here’s a belated note from Libertopia 2013: while I was working the ALL table, John Bush of Rise Up Radio dropped by to talk, and very generously invited me to an interview about some of the themes in my article Scratching By, and my talk at Libertopia, touching on structural poverty, political monopoly, the libertarian left, and grassroots mutual aid. Here’s the interview.^[1]

And by libertarian, we mean Anarchist. . . .

^[1]I haven’t got a transcript yet; soon, I hope.↩

Article posted 22 August 2013 Help us ALL get to Libertopia! posted 1pm

This upcoming Fall is going to be an exciting season for the ALL Distro. It begins next in San Diego: I’m going to be putting on a workshop at the Libertopia 2013 Festival (August 30 – September 2), on Black-and-Red Markets – How to Build a Gift Agora, or: Left-Libertarian Counter-Economics, Grassroots Mutual Aid and Radical Left Counter-Institutions, which intended as a sort of introduction, for people interested in agorist counter-economics, to some points of productive contact with the grassroots forms of mutual aid, solidarity, and bottom-up counter-institutions emerging from the Anarchist and anti-authoritarian Left, and some expansion and workshopping of some of the ideas suggested in the comments on Black-and-Red Markets here. In addition to my talk, I’m also going to be bringing a trunk full of anarchist and left-libertarian literature with me — chapbooks from the Distro, Markets Not Capitalism, books by Gary Chartier and Kevin Carson, and flyers, buttons and magazines on left-libertarianism and counter-economics. I’ll be working with compas from C4SS to set up a table in the Festival’s exhibition space. We’ll be bringing a strong free-market anti-capitalist presence to Libertopia, passing out literature, selling books, spreading ideas, answering some questions and starting some conversations about left-wing market anarchist ideas.

This is just the kick-off for a season of travelling, talking, and spread the word: the Distro will be be distributing our literature and talking about individualist anarchism at the New Orleans Anarchist Bookfair and SFL Regional Conferences in October; I’ll be travelling to give a talk on Anarchism at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK this November; I’ll be making a research and literature-gathering journey to the Labadie Collection in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and there may be more to announce soon. More on all of that soon. But for now, we’re trying to cover the costs for Libertopia, and to replenish our travel budget, so that we can keep up with scholarship, speaking and traveling for a busy Fall season. Here are the costs we’re trying to cover:

To pay transportation and lodging costs to get the Charles Johnson and the ALL Distro from Auburn, Alabama to the festival in San Diego, California (approx. costs $800)
To rent an exhibition booth at the conference for our literature and for person-to-person outreach (cost: $400).
To cover out-of-pocket transportation & lodging expenses for other Molinari Institute speakers who will be presenting workshops or panels at Libertopia (approx. costs $1,000).^[1]
To replenish the Institute’s travel budget and provide seed money for our upcoming travel to bookfairs, speaking appearances, research, etc. (approx costs $600).

You can help out here, or by using the widget over on the right. Help us ALL get to Libertopia!

Thanks! And tell your friends. Anything you can chip in will help us a lot during the upcoming season. Hope to see y’ALL there!

Also.

GT 2012-09-23: In which I join an anti-capitalist mob at Libertopia (2012)

^[1]If we don’t make our fundraising goal, we’ll do equally-divided partial reimbursements to the extent possible.↩

Article posted 19 July 2013 First annual New Orleans Anarchist Bookfair, October 19-20, 2013 posted 11am / revised 11am

Poster by Jolly Armada and Erin Wilson.

I was happy to see this in my mailbox this morning. From the New Orleans bookfair collective (emphasis added):

Comrades,

We are writing to let you know that the First Annual New Orleans Anarchist Book Fair will take place on October 19-20, 2013. We are now accepting vendor applications for tabling. Please visit our website for more information on the book fair in general and registration in particular.

We are also on Facebook and Twitter.

Solidarity,

The New Orleans Anarchist Book Fair Organizing Committee

N.O.A.B.
1631 Elysian Fields #282
New Orleans, LA 70117
http://www.nolaanarchistbookfair.org/

From the website:

We'd like to invite you to an exciting experiment in books, tables and Gulf Coast Anarchism, The First Annual New Orleans Anarchist Book Fair! Our collective has been hard at work securing a wonderful list of tablers and events for our book-based autonomist free-for-all on October 19th and 2013, 2013. The Book Fair will take place at the cavernous Zeitgeist Multi-disciplenary Arts Center and include events, shows and readings all around the city. For more information feel free to browse around the site or contact us directly. We are also helping to coordinate rideshares and housing for those coming into the city from out of town.

— About New Orleans Anarchist Bookfair

Their Facebook page is at facebook.com/NewOrleansAnarchistBookfair. Their website is at nolaanarchistbookfair.org. Mark your calendars! A.L.L. Distro just sent in an application for a table; more on this, hopefully, soon.

Article posted 11 March 2013 Anarchist Communications: Ask an Anarchist! comes to Oklahoma posted 1pm

This Wednesday (March 13) at Memorial Student Union in Norman, Oklahoma, there’s going to be an Ask an Anarchist event hosted by the University of Oklahoma Students for a Stateless Society. Here’s the details, courtesy of Jason Lee Byas and Grayson English.

“Who will build the roads? Doesn’t anarchism just mean breaking stuff? Isn’t it hypocritical for you to be a club at a state university?”

Come visit us at Ask an Anarchist Day on March 13th (next Wednesday) and find out.

Free information about anarchy and anarchism, provided by the Students for a Stateless Society at the University of Oklahoma!

We will be providing free pamphlets about various anarchist ideas, and we’ll be discussing our reasons for being anarchists.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013
9:00 am – 5:00 pm Memorial Student Union, near Crossroads

Hosted by the Students for a Stateless Society.

For more, see the Facebook event page. I’m happy to mention that the pamphlets will include several items from the ALL Distro.

Article posted 28 November 2012 M@ Mailed Monthly: Organized Anarchy and Free Markets Against Privateering posted 11am / revised 11am

tl;dr. Two beautiful new booklets are available for ordering to-day from the ALL Distro — this month’s Market Anarchy, with an article by Sheldon Richman on free-market anticapitalist approaches to privatization, and this month’s Anarchist Classic, an 1899 pamphlet by Fred Schulder on anarchy, evolution, and free social organization. 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? You can contact me for details, or you can order directly from the Market Anarchy Zine Series and Anarchist Classics Series homepages.

Scatter tracts, like raindrops, over the land….

–William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, March 1831.

So it’s been a long time since I last posted an update about the ALL Distro’s monthly series to this website — since I got the new Distro website up and running, I’ve mostly kept up with the updates over there and haven’t been posting notes over here as new issues come out. Sometime soon I hope to put up a catch-up post just to give you an idea of what’s come out through the Distro over the past several months. But in the meantime: To-day, I am happy to announce this past month’s two additions to the Alliance of the Libertarian Left Distro. Let us welcome No. 22 of the monthly Anarchist Classics Series, Fred Schulder’s 1899 lecture / pamphlet on The Relation of Anarchism to Organization. And No. 35 of the monthly Market Anarchy Zine Series, Sheldon Richman’s recent essay on radical, homesteading-based alternatives to neoliberal privateering, From State to Society: How and How Not to Privatize.

Market Anarchy #35 (Nov’12). From State to Society. How & How Not To Privatize Sheldon Richman (2012)	This article by Sheldon Richman explores a radical libertarian, free market anti-capitalist approach to privatization — decentralized, homesteading-based alternatives to neoliberal models of corporate privatization, and a libertarian attack on capitalist privateering and government outsourcing masquerading as free-market reforms. “It’s not privatization per se, but free competition through voluntary exchange, that is desirable. It matters little whether the government calls people who perform its functions public employees or private contractors. When a company becomes a monopoly government contractor, to that extent it is an arm of the state rather than a private firm. For that reason such ersatz ‘privatization᾿ devices as contracting out the operation of prisons and charter schools merely blur the line between ‘private’ and ‘public’ sector – in the nature of corporatism – and undermine the case for the genuine divestiture of stateheld assets. . . . “Since government possession of state assets originated in one form of usurpation or another, the requirement that they be bought back is unjust. It may be argued that the revenue could be used to benefit the general public . . . but political incentives tend to work in the other direction. Politicians will see the new revenue as an opportunity to launch new programs that offer benefits to well-organized interest groups. . . “Better, then, that state assets be seen as existing in a state of nonownership . . . and opened to homesteading . . . . Government elementary and secondary schools could be turned over to the people who work in them or the students’ parents, or both groups, who would be free to decide how to run them — without tax money. A government university could become the property of its students, members of its faculty and staff, or both. Some schools might organize as joint stock companies with tradable shares, while others might become consumer or producer co?@c3;b6;peratives. Competition would determine which forms best satisfied consumers and attracted capable producers . . . .’ $1.00 for 1; 75¢/ea in bulk.
Anarchist Classics #22 (Nov’12). The Relation of Anarchism to Organization. Fred Schulder (1899)	This odd little classic from Fred Schulder (1874-1961) — the individualist anarchist writer, lecturer, and sometime traveling salesman from Cleveland, Ohio — is a discussion of anarchy, the theory of evolution, the role of free association and property in an anarchic society, and the emergence of positive social organization. The lecture reprinted in this chapbook was originally delivered by Fred Schulder at the Franklin Club, a social and intellectual discussion group in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 18, 1898. The next year, Schulder was persuaded to prepare his club lecture for publication in pamphlet form by his friend, the renowned printer Horace E. Carr. "Organization has been defined as the taking on of organic structure. . . . Evolution is a series of changes, under natural law, from a diffused, uniform and indefinite arrangement, to a concentrated, multiform and definite arrangement. . . . Organization proceeds according to the same inevitable laws, and . . . constitutes the evolution, not only of living beings, but also of all communities, societies, and society in general . . . . Organization is the law of life — of development. It is true that in union there is strength, but in organization there is still more strength. . . . "Anarchism may be defined as the doctrine that the liberty of every individual shall be limited only by the equal liberty of every other. . . . We can find nothing in organization itself, which is a denial of equal liberty. Men [sic] may, and where they find it advantageous, in fact do combine and organize, without being forced to do so. And such organization will persist under liberty, so long as the individuals composing it find it to their advantage. Society at large is such an organization . . . The organization may be in its incipient stage, but the development is going on as fast as antagonistic forces will permit. . . Under liberty, however, this difficulty will continue to grow less; men [sic] will ever more realize their mutual dependence, and this must increase with the development of the social organism. And realizing this mutual dependence, they will adjust these minor differences according to their intelligence!!!@@e2;20ac;af;—!!!@@e2;20ac;af;an adjustment which government often prevents. . . . "What the anarchist objects to in the state is not the Element of organization but the element of government. Through the instrumentality of the state some individuals acquire a monopoly of opportunities, some of which are absolutely necessary to the production of wealth, and others very helpful to it – monopolies which are unthinkable in the absence of government, and which enable their holders to extract from the producer a tribute. Such is the fruit of organized robbery. And again, anarchism is opposed, not to the organization, but to the robbery. While any particular government, according to the laws of organization, tends to grow and become stronger until it loses its adaptation to its surroundings, government in general is losing the adaptation to its surroundings, and is undergoing a change in the direction of dissolution." $2.00 for 1; $1/ea in bulk.

Market Anarchy #35 (Nov’12). From State to Society.

How & How Not To Privatize

Sheldon Richman (2012)

This article by Sheldon Richman explores a radical libertarian, free market anti-capitalist approach to privatization — decentralized, homesteading-based alternatives to neoliberal models of corporate privatization, and a libertarian attack on capitalist privateering and government outsourcing masquerading as free-market reforms.

“It’s not privatization per se, but free competition through voluntary exchange, that is desirable. It matters little whether the government calls people who perform its functions public employees or private contractors. When a company becomes a monopoly government contractor, to that extent it is an arm of the state rather than a private firm. For that reason such ersatz ‘privatization᾿ devices as contracting out the operation of prisons and charter schools merely blur the line between ‘private’ and ‘public’ sector – in the nature of corporatism – and undermine the case for the genuine divestiture of stateheld assets. . . .

“Since government possession of state assets originated in one form of usurpation or another, the requirement that they be bought back is unjust. It may be argued that the revenue could be used to benefit the general public . . . but political incentives tend to work in the other direction. Politicians will see the new revenue as an opportunity to launch new programs that offer benefits to well-organized interest groups. . .

“Better, then, that state assets be seen as existing in a state of nonownership . . . and opened to homesteading . . . . Government elementary and secondary schools could be turned over to the people who work in them or the students’ parents, or both groups, who would be free to decide how to run them — without tax money. A government university could become the property of its students, members of its faculty and staff, or both. Some schools might organize as joint stock companies with tradable shares, while others might become consumer or producer co?@c3;b6;peratives. Competition would determine which forms best satisfied consumers and attracted capable producers . . . .’

$1.00 for 1; 75¢/ea in bulk.

Anarchist Classics #22 (Nov’12). The Relation of Anarchism to Organization.

Fred Schulder (1899)

This odd little classic from Fred Schulder (1874-1961) — the individualist anarchist writer, lecturer, and sometime traveling salesman from Cleveland, Ohio — is a discussion of anarchy, the theory of evolution, the role of free association and property in an anarchic society, and the emergence of positive social organization. The lecture reprinted in this chapbook was originally delivered by Fred Schulder at the Franklin Club, a social and intellectual discussion group in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 18, 1898. The next year, Schulder was persuaded to prepare his club lecture for publication in pamphlet form by his friend, the renowned printer Horace E. Carr.

"Organization has been defined as the taking on of organic structure. . . . Evolution is a series of changes, under natural law, from a diffused, uniform and indefinite arrangement, to a concentrated, multiform and definite arrangement. . . . Organization proceeds according to the same inevitable laws, and . . . constitutes the evolution, not only of living beings, but also of all communities, societies, and society in general . . . . Organization is the law of life — of development. It is true that in union there is strength, but in organization there is still more strength. . . .

"Anarchism may be defined as the doctrine that the liberty of every individual shall be limited only by the equal liberty of every other. . . . We can find nothing in organization itself, which is a denial of equal liberty. Men [sic] may, and where they find it advantageous, in fact do combine and organize, without being forced to do so. And such organization will persist under liberty, so long as the individuals composing it find it to their advantage. Society at large is such an organization . . . The organization may be in its incipient stage, but the development is going on as fast as antagonistic forces will permit. . . Under liberty, however, this difficulty will continue to grow less; men [sic] will ever more realize their mutual dependence, and this must increase with the development of the social organism. And realizing this mutual dependence, they will adjust these minor differences according to their intelligence!!!@@e2;20ac;af;—!!!@@e2;20ac;af;an adjustment which government often prevents. . . .

"What the anarchist objects to in the state is not the Element of organization but the element of government. Through the instrumentality of the state some individuals acquire a monopoly of opportunities, some of which are absolutely necessary to the production of wealth, and others very helpful to it – monopolies which are unthinkable in the absence of government, and which enable their holders to extract from the producer a tribute. Such is the fruit of organized robbery. And again, anarchism is opposed, not to the organization, but to the robbery. While any particular government, according to the laws of organization, tends to grow and become stronger until it loses its adaptation to its surroundings, government in general is losing the adaptation to its surroundings, and is undergoing a change in the direction of dissolution."

$2.00 for 1; $1/ea in bulk.

Now as I’ve mentioned before, both the Market Anarchy Zine Series and the Anarchist Classics Zine Series are regular monthly publications, with one issue each being sent out each month. You can always order individual copies online from the Distro page, but if you’d like to save on shipping & handling charges, and to get new orders as soon as they come out, you can always sign up for a regular subscription. Subscriptions can be for personal reading, or for discounted bulk orders of material for distributing, tabling, or for stocking your local infoshop and other radical spaces. I’m happy to say that in the past few months I have added online subscription forms, so that you can set up half-year or full-year subscriptions directly from the Market Anarchy Zine Series and Anarchist Classics Zine Series homepages.

Alternatively, if you’re considering subscribing you can also 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 (all prices already include any shipping and handling costs):

Market Anarchy Zine Series
Delivered each month	Individuals	Bulk Distribution Packets
Delivered each month	$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
Delivered each month	$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, customizations of booklets with local contact information for your ALL chapter or local Anarchist activities, discounts for receiving quarterly shipments, etc. etc. etc.), see Market Anarchy Mailed Monthly. 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. In December we’ll be dropping some more science; until then–enjoy the Anarchy!