[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Wish you’d been a fly on the wall at last month’s Molinari Society symposium on “Anarchist Perspectives”?
Well, of course you don’t. A fly’s brain is too small to process the event properly. Plus you might have gotten squished against the wall by a stampeding bewilderment of philosophers.
But in any case, Charles Johnson’s comments on Matt MacKenzie’s and Geoff Plauché’s papers are now online. Gaudete igitur.
I’m back from Mordor! Though since most of the times I’ve been in DC have been libertarian-related (e.g., my three summers at IHS) I actually associate DC more with libertarianism than with statism. Well, that plus good ethnic restaurants, coffeeshops, and bookstores.
The Molinari Society meeting went well and had a good turnout (despite the meeting’s location being changed at the last minute). Matt MacKenzie argued that even mutually consensual transactions can be exploitative from a libertarian standpoint if they are enabled by unfairly coercive background conditions; Charles Johnson in his comments raised questions about unfair but noncoercive backgrounds, as well as some epistemological difficulties. Geoff Plauché criticised the founder-legislator myth from a Hayekian spontaneous-order standpoint; Charles in his comments raised questions about consciously constructed but noncoercive orders. Other libertarian-related events I attended included author-meets-critics sessions for Jan Narveson and Tara Smith, and the Objectivist Center reception. (Apparently for APA purposes they’re still calling themselves the Objectivist Center rather than the Atlas Society.) Good to see lots of old friends.
In the book exhibits I was pleased to see that the full, massive, unabridged version of Foucault’s History of Madness is finally available in English.
I also went to the Library of Congress to look up some old Molinari and Rose Wilder Lane stuff. When I first went to the Library back in 1987 (to photocopy the notoriously Nietzschean first edition of We the Living), security was so bad that I actually wrote my Congressman about it. (Yeah, I did stuff like that in those days.) Nowadays security is much tighter – but clearly aimed more at the threat of terrorists than at the more likely threat of thieves. It would now be fairly difficult to smuggle a bomb in – but still not terribly difficult to smuggle a book out.
While I was in DC two scoundrelly ex-presidents left this sphere – one hastily murdered, most likely to avoid embarrassing inquiries into the past dealings of the American state; the other obsequiously lauded, for similar reasons. The beat goes on ….
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
To anyone planning to be at the APA in DC next week, don’t forget to check out the Molinari Society’s third annual Symposium:
GVIII-4. Friday, 29 December 2006, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 p.m.
Molinari Society symposium: “Anarchist Perspectives”
Virginia Suite C (Lobby Level), Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, 2660 Woodley Road NWSession 1, 11:15-12:15:
chair: Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
speaker: Matthew MacKenzie (Muhlenberg College)
title: “Exploitation: A Dialectical Anarchist Perspective”
commentator: Charles W. Johnson (Molinari Institute)Session 2, 12:15-1:15:
chair: Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
speaker: Geoffrey Allan Plauché (Louisiana State University)
title: “On the Myth of the Founder-Legislator in Political Philosophy”
commentator: Charles W. Johnson (Molinari Institute)
Also, don’t miss the AAPSSfest on Jan Narveson (Thursday at 9) or the ARSfest on Tara Smith (Friday at 1:30). (But do miss Narveson’s other session, since, alas, it conflicts with the Molinarifest.)
In other Molinari news, look for the first issue of The Industrial Radical some time next month.
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Florence Finch Kelly was an important libertarian writer of the late 19th century, and a contributor to Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty. Isabel Paterson was one of the leading libertarian theorists of the early-to-mid-20th century, and a major influence on Ayn Rand.
It now turns out that their trajectories intersected: Kelly wrote a review of Paterson’s first (or first published, anyway) novel, The Shadow Riders. It’s now online in the Molinari Institute’s online library.
I plan to put the novel online as well, but you’ll just have to wait ….
Tomorrow night Matthew Quest of the Onyx Foundation will be speaking at Auburn on the topic “Pan-African historian C.L.R. James’ views on Democracy in Ancient Greece.” I’ll be commenting. The event is being sponsored by the Auburn University Libertarians, the Onyx Foundation, and the Molinari Institute.
For anyone planning to be in the area, it’ll be in Foy Union 217 at 7:00 p.m., Thursday, November 30. Here are the background readings.
Incidentally, the Onyx Foundation in general, and Matthew’s work in particular, represent precisely the sort of potential intersection of “left ” and “libertarian” concerns that I’m forever blathering about, while the focus on classical Greece adds the Austro-Athenian dimension as well. (For Quest’s work on James see here.)
For too long libertarians, and I mean anarchist libertarians, have treated market anarchism almost as an “esoteric doctrine” to which one is introduced only after one has thoroughly assimilated some more moderate form of libertarianism – as though anarchism were an impediment rather than an asset in making the case for liberty.
Of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: potential converts find anarchism off-putting because they don’t know what it is, and they don’t know what it is because we avoid explaining it. In fact market anarchism can and should be one of libertarianism’s greatest selling-points, highlighting a radical and inspiring alternative to the present system rather than some variant of economic conservatism. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position.
It is thus with great pleasure that I introduce the Center for a Stateless Society, a new project of the Molinari Institute. Under the directorship of Brad Spangler, the center aims to bring a market anarchist perspective to the popular press, rather than leaving it confined to scholarly studies and movement periodicals.
Here’s the official press release:
Anarchists launch major media offensive
October 10, 2006FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A tiny think tank has set out on a project to provide ongoing news commentary in order to promote their set of views, known as market anarchism.AUBURN, ALABAMA – October 10, 2006 – Center for a Stateless Society – The Molinari Institute, a market anarchist think tank, today launched a new media effort aiming to put their agenda to abolish government front and center in US political discourse. Dubbing their project the Center for a Stateless Society (www.c4ss.org), institute officials laid out plans to publish and distribute news commentary written by anarchists with radically free-market oriented views on economics – taking market anarchism out of the realm of academia and obscure internet blogs in order to put it in the public eye.
Molinari Institute President Roderick Long explained “For too long libertarians, and I mean anarchist libertarians, have treated market anarchism almost as an esoteric doctrine. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position. The Center for a Stateless Society aims to bring a market anarchist perspective to the popular press, rather than leaving it confined to scholarly studies and movement periodicals.”
Naming longtime radical libertarian activist and freelance web developer Brad Spangler as the first Director of the Center, Long unveiled the Center’s new web site at www.c4ss.org for Molinari Institute supporters and the public.
Said Spangler “I’m honored to accept the post. In anticipation of this moment, we’ve developed a database of thousands of US media outlets for email distribution of content which these publishers will be able to use free of charge. Additionally, the c4ss.org web site makes use of stable, reliable and ‘free as in freedom’ open source web technologies. We’ve developed the site in such a way as to make maximum possible use of social bookmarking services, web syndication feeds and search engine optimization techniques. With this site, we aim to awaken more Americans than ever before to the brutal reality that all governments everywhere are essentially nothing more than murderous bandit gangs – and show them the shining light of hope for a world without the State.”
###
ORGANIZATIONAL SUMMARY
The mission of the Molinari Institute is to promote understanding of the philosophy of Market Anarchism as a sane, consensual alternative to the hypertrophic violence of the State. The Institute takes its name from Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), originator of the theory of Market Anarchism. The Center for a Stateless Society is the Molinari Institute’s new media center.CONTACT
Brad Spangler
Center for a Stateless Society
media@c4ss.org
http://www.c4ss.org/
The first two anarchist op-eds are already up: one by Per Bylund on North Korea, and another by me on Iraq.