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iRad I.3 in Print, iRad I.2 Online

By on July 13, 2013 4

The third issue (Spring 2013) of The Industrial Radical will be back from the printers and on its way to subscribers shortly, featuring articles by Less Antman, Jason Lee Byas, Kevin Carson, Nathan Goodman, Anthony Gregory, Trevor Hultner, Charles Johnson, Joshua Katz, Thomas L. Knapp, Abby Martin, Chad Nelson, Sheldon Richman, Jeremy Weiland, and your humble correspondent, on topics ranging from NSA surveillance and whistleblowing, the Turkish revolt, the Boston lockdown, the Keystone XL pipeline, intellectual property, and the futility of gun control in an age of 3-D printing, to compulsory schooling, American militarism, conscription, worker exploitation, property rights, prison ethics, rape culture, the pros and cons of communism, and the dubious legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

The Industrial Radical I.3 (Spring 2013)

With each new issue published, we post the immediately preceding issue online. Hence a free pdf file of our second issue (Winter 2013) is now available here. (See the first issue also.)

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French Liberalism Meets Boston Anarchism

By on July 9, 2013 0

… which is actually a pretty good description of my politics.

Anyway: In 1888, the Journal des Économistes – the chief periodical of classical liberalism in France, at that time under the editorship of Gustave de Molinari himself – published an article about individualist anarchism in America, with particular focus on the writers associated with Benjamin Tucker’s periodical Liberty. The author was Sophie Raffalovich, about whom more below. Benjamin Tucker replied in the pages of Liberty a few months later. The Journal des Économistes would return to the subject of Tucker and Liberty in 1902, in a piece by Paul Ghio.

I’ve now translated and posted the pieces by Raffalovich (“The Boston Anarchists”) and Ghio (“An American Anarchist”); I’ve also posted Tucker’s reply to Raffalovich (“A French View of Boston Anarchists”).

So who was Sophie Raffalovich? Most of the information I’ve been able to find out about her (see especially here, here, and here) is really about her family. Her parents were the Russian Jewish banker Hermann Raffalovich and the anti-Bonapartist literary patron (and Spencer/Mill fan) Marie Raffalovich; her brothers were the economist Arthur and the poet Marc-André. In 1890 she married the Irish reformer William O’Brien (he writes about her, with somewhat gag-inducing sentimentality, here), with whom she clashed on the issue of women’s suffrage (he was for it, she was against – her gay brother was also against gay rights, so I guess it figures), and published several books of essays as “Mrs. William O’Brien.” The only picture I’ve been able to find for her is from an announcement of their wedding (right); I don’t know why her nationality is represented by what looks like an American flag. (His is the Irish naval jack.) After losing her fortune in World War I (it had been invested in Russia and Germany) and her husband in 1928, she moved to France, where she hid out during World War II and the German occupation – not the safest spot in the world for a Jewish libertarian – and managed to evade Nazi scrutiny. She spent her final years as an impoverished invalid in Picardy. When she was born (1860), Jules Verne had not yet published his first book; when she died (1960), Sputnik had already fallen from orbit.

Paul Ghio is much more of a cipher; I’ve found no birth or death dates for him. He taught economics at the Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales in Paris. He would later write an entire book on American anarchism, as well as volume 1 of an economic treatise (but I’ve seen no evidence of a volume 2). The latter work is dedicated to Molinari, and sings the praises of La Boétie to boot. Ghio also has an essay in the Journal des Économistes on the Chicago anarchists, which I may translate when I get a chance.

Welcome to the Desert of the Huckabee

By on July 7, 2013 31

Mike Huckabee projects such an aura of cuddly friendliness, and in reality he is such a vile, bloodthirsty creep.

Just saw him favourably quoting these words from MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

Huckabee conveniently omitted the lines that follow – “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” – presumably in order to leave the impression that MLK would be down with Huckabee’s thumping-select-portions-of-the-Bible method of determining the content of the moral law.

The occasion for Huckabee’s foray into natural-law jurisprudence was his protest against the restrictions on political advocacy that churches have to follow in order to qualify for tax-exempt status.

Then after finishing up the tax-exempt issue, Huckabee immediately segues into a denunciation of “illegal” immigration, even to the point of condemning the placing of canisters of water in the desert where immigrants can find them. ’Cause nothing expresses the moral law better than laws requiring people to leave their neighbours to die of thirst.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

Warder of the Brain

By on July 3, 2013 3

I don’t have an opinion as to George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence. (The usual method of arriving at such a judgment seems to be to take a look at the party affiliation on one’s own voter registration card, but it didn’t work for me.) But the latest argument against Zimmerman strikes me as pretty silly.

The claim is that Zimmerman must be a liar because he claimed not to be familiar with the legal concept of “stand your ground,” despite having once taken a course in which that concept was explained at length in class.

I mean – seriously? One thing I’ve learned in over two decades of teaching is that explaining something at length is no guarantee that anyone in the class – even the best students – will remember anything about it.

Dry Humour

By on June 29, 2013 4

Although she did not drink martinis, she graciously prepared a double for me every evening before dinner. I introduced her to Tanqueray gin and Noilly Pratt vermouth, the ingredients for a perfect martini. Sensitive husband that I was, I courteously congratulated her every day on a fine martini, cautiously suggesting that it might be a touch drier. Day after day, I congratulated her, suggesting that it might be a touch drier still. One day I sipped the martini and bathed her in kisses: “Betsey, you’re wonderful, it’s perfect.” She did not take well to my gushing. Betsey almost never raised her voice, but raise it she did: “I knew it! I knew it! Of course I’m wonderful! Of course it’s perfect! You’re drinking straight gin.”
(Eugene D. Genovese, about his wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, in Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage)

(No, I haven’t read the whole book. If I want to read a radical socialist turned right-wing opportunist, I can always read Marx.)

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