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M@MM for July 2011 — Coming attractions; a real announcement to arrive soon.

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.

Monday Lazy Linking

Wednesday Lazy Linking

Barack Obama: Deep cover Anarchist?

Has the current occupant of the White House been sneaking reads of Equality: The Unknown Ideal, and, convinced by Roderick’s argument, spent the last few years quietly advocating the Anarchistic doctrine that principles of individual freedom, carried to their fullest extent, logically entail freedom from any and all forms of government? Selective quotation and convenient ellipses would seem to indicate that he has!

We consider these rights to be universal, a codification of liberty’s meaning, constraining all levels of government …. Moreover, we recognize that the very idea of these universal rights presupposes the equal worth of every individual. … We also understand that a declaration is not a government; … [T]here [are] seeds of anarchy in the idea of individual freedom, an intoxicating danger in the idea of equality… [F]or if everyone is truly free, without the constraints of birth or rank and an inherited social order, how can we ever hope to form a society that coheres?

–Barack Obama (2006), The Audacity of Hope, 86-87.

Well, we can’t. Which is fine. Of course, you’re free to go around cohering as much as you want on your own time; but what I want is a peaceful, consensual society. One where people come together where they want to, and aren’t forced into lockstep where they don’t want to be. Obama is of course right that the principles of individual liberty and equality produce declarations, not governments, and that that soil is sown with the seeds of Anarchy. He’s right to see that when you let those seeds grow and come into bloom, it means that everybody is truly free, and that they overwhelm any political scheme of rigid rows, of constraints of birth and rank, of social orders imposed from above (whether by the self-selected, or the majority-elected). Which is exactly why Anarchy is something to be desired and cultivated. The solution to the problem of incipient Anarchy is to realize that there isn’t a problem. Political coherence is not required. Freedom, peace and equality are more than enough.

(Via Francois Tremblay 2008-12-03, via Noor Mehta, via Facebook.)

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Friday Lazy Linking

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