Center for a Stateless Society
@c4ssdotorg.bsky.social
The Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org) is a left market anarchist think tank promoting the ideas of vibrant social cooperation free from violence and oppression.
"Engaging in mutual aid and direct action provides the solidarity that replenishes societies atomized by state structures." - Joseph Parampathu
c4ss.org/content/55067
c4ss.org/content/55067
Creative Destruction: Rethinking Failure after the State
When we think about the term “abolition,” we think of removing our old notions or of breaking free from the constraints of tradition. We might conjure up the idea of wiping clean our slate and being l...
c4ss.org
December 24, 2025 at 10:45 PM
"Engaging in mutual aid and direct action provides the solidarity that replenishes societies atomized by state structures." - Joseph Parampathu
c4ss.org/content/55067
c4ss.org/content/55067
"The real thing — that 70s model of industrial decentralization and relocalization, worker ownership and self-management, and neighborhood direct democracy — now seems more relevant than ever." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60923
c4ss.org/content/60923
Time for an Old Idea to Come Around Again?
Radical Technology and Neighborhood Power At Reason (“The Anarchist and the Republican,” April 13), Jesse Walker writes of a period in the 1970s when an Old Rightist speechwriter for Barry Goldwater t...
c4ss.org
December 19, 2025 at 3:04 AM
"The real thing — that 70s model of industrial decentralization and relocalization, worker ownership and self-management, and neighborhood direct democracy — now seems more relevant than ever." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60923
c4ss.org/content/60923
"Governments engage in war so frequently that people forget to be puzzled at the phenomenon." - Roderick Long
c4ss.org/content/12570
c4ss.org/content/12570
The Real Meaning of 9/11
On this latest anniversary I want to talk about how the state breeds war – both in the sense of provoking attacks like 9/11, and in the sense of generating its own misguided responses, like the Iraq w...
c4ss.org
December 17, 2025 at 3:38 AM
"Governments engage in war so frequently that people forget to be puzzled at the phenomenon." - Roderick Long
c4ss.org/content/12570
c4ss.org/content/12570
"Does Society need the State to settle its difficulties? Answer: Yes; just like a drowning man needs a glass of water." - Laurance Labadie
c4ss.org/content/60239
c4ss.org/content/60239
Laurance Labadie’s “Is Credulity Sweeping the World?”
Commentary This piece was originally published in 1937 as part of Vol. 1 No. 6 of Labadie’s own publication Discussion: A Journal of Free Spirits. As per my update I have not noted small spelling and ...
c4ss.org
December 12, 2025 at 8:51 PM
"Does Society need the State to settle its difficulties? Answer: Yes; just like a drowning man needs a glass of water." - Laurance Labadie
c4ss.org/content/60239
c4ss.org/content/60239
"Moving to a different part of the world and trying to improve one’s life — with or without permission from a government — does not violate anyone’s liberty." - Darian Worden
c4ss.org/content/3350
c4ss.org/content/3350
Liberty For All Means Immigrants Too
Darian Worden: A consistent advocate of individual liberty is an effective advocate of individual liberty.
c4ss.org
December 10, 2025 at 7:47 PM
"Moving to a different part of the world and trying to improve one’s life — with or without permission from a government — does not violate anyone’s liberty." - Darian Worden
c4ss.org/content/3350
c4ss.org/content/3350
"Under anarchism, mass accumulation and concentration of capital is impossible. Without concentration of capital, wage slavery is impossible. And without wage slavery, there’s nothing most people would recognize as 'capitalism.'" - Anna Morgenstern
c4ss.org/content/4043
c4ss.org/content/4043
Anarcho-“Capitalism” is Impossible
Anna Morgenstern on words and their meanings.
c4ss.org
December 9, 2025 at 8:42 PM
"Under anarchism, mass accumulation and concentration of capital is impossible. Without concentration of capital, wage slavery is impossible. And without wage slavery, there’s nothing most people would recognize as 'capitalism.'" - Anna Morgenstern
c4ss.org/content/4043
c4ss.org/content/4043
"To reject war and the state, in turn, is to favor a safer world, not the treacherous, entropic nightmare prophesied by today’s flag-bearers of military adventurism." - David D'Amato
c4ss.org/content/9610
c4ss.org/content/9610
End War by Ending the State
D'Amato: To be consistently and undeviatingly anti-war means to be anti-state.
c4ss.org
December 9, 2025 at 1:01 AM
"To reject war and the state, in turn, is to favor a safer world, not the treacherous, entropic nightmare prophesied by today’s flag-bearers of military adventurism." - David D'Amato
c4ss.org/content/9610
c4ss.org/content/9610
"Open migration and ending the war on drugs are the quickest paths to further destabilizing the horrifying drug cartels' oligopoly of violence." - Abbey Bee
c4ss.org/content/49833
c4ss.org/content/49833
Progressive Border Patrol
This is the second part of the series called “Nice Cops and Other Cryptids” exploring apologism for prominent agents of the state. Part 1, “Nice Cops” can be found here. Most people don’t realize the ...
c4ss.org
December 6, 2025 at 11:38 PM
"Open migration and ending the war on drugs are the quickest paths to further destabilizing the horrifying drug cartels' oligopoly of violence." - Abbey Bee
c4ss.org/content/49833
c4ss.org/content/49833
"What if Newton had claimed to own calculus, or the law of gravity? Would we have to pay a fee to his estate every time we used one of the principles he discovered?" - Roderick Long
c4ss.org/content/14857
c4ss.org/content/14857
The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual property rights have a tainted past. Originally, both patents and copyrights were grants of monopoly privilege pure and simple.
c4ss.org
December 5, 2025 at 11:27 PM
"What if Newton had claimed to own calculus, or the law of gravity? Would we have to pay a fee to his estate every time we used one of the principles he discovered?" - Roderick Long
c4ss.org/content/14857
c4ss.org/content/14857
"Computing power, no matter how capable, will never be able to appropriately manage resource allocation nor plan the economy. " - Jocheved Matt
c4ss.org/content/50986
c4ss.org/content/50986
The Last Person in the Room Must Close the Door: Hayek in the Age of Computing
There is a common joke in computing circles to announce at the beginning of a course that “The last person in the room must close the door.” Though at first blush the request seems reasonable, this is...
c4ss.org
December 4, 2025 at 9:38 PM
"Computing power, no matter how capable, will never be able to appropriately manage resource allocation nor plan the economy. " - Jocheved Matt
c4ss.org/content/50986
c4ss.org/content/50986
"Consider the conceptual reasons that libertarians have to oppose authoritarianism, not only as enforced by governments but also as expressed in culture, business, the family, and civil society." - Charles Johnson
c4ss.org/content/12460
c4ss.org/content/12460
Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin
What Kind of Commitment Is Libertarianism?
c4ss.org
December 3, 2025 at 9:58 PM
"Consider the conceptual reasons that libertarians have to oppose authoritarianism, not only as enforced by governments but also as expressed in culture, business, the family, and civil society." - Charles Johnson
c4ss.org/content/12460
c4ss.org/content/12460
"What the received version of the Plymouth story leaves out is that the role of the 'collective farm' in the little drama is played not by the naive Puritan zealots seeking to 'hold all things in common' but by a private corporation." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/22792
c4ss.org/content/22792
No, Stossel. The Pilgrims Were Starved by a Corporation, Not by Communism.
Each year at this time somebody in the right-libertarian world, reenacting an obligatory Thanksgiving ritual, drags out the old chestnut about the Pilgrims at Plymouth almost starving from “communism”...
c4ss.org
November 28, 2025 at 2:28 AM
"What the received version of the Plymouth story leaves out is that the role of the 'collective farm' in the little drama is played not by the naive Puritan zealots seeking to 'hold all things in common' but by a private corporation." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/22792
c4ss.org/content/22792
"Many engineers believed this approach was too chaotic to succeed. How could a system of coordination function with no command center? It would be pure anarchy!" - Tech Learning Collective
c4ss.org/content/53593
c4ss.org/content/53593
The Internet was always anarchist, so anarchists must learn to become responsible for operating it
The fundamental tenet of anarchism is the resistance to an Archos, Greek for “master.” To advocate for anarchism is to position oneself in opposition to a master, i.e., to claim the fundamental right ...
c4ss.org
November 25, 2025 at 9:55 PM
"Many engineers believed this approach was too chaotic to succeed. How could a system of coordination function with no command center? It would be pure anarchy!" - Tech Learning Collective
c4ss.org/content/53593
c4ss.org/content/53593
"We owe it to ourselves to create a world in which rapists are held accountable for their actions and a culture in which human rights violations like rape are viewed as the atrocities they are." - @peacenotpeas.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/39385
c4ss.org/content/39385
Bill Cosby, Rape Culture and Individual Responsibility
On July 26th, 35 of Bill Cosby’s rape victims came forward to discuss their rapes and the culture that ignored their cries for help. A serial rapist going uncharged for years due to celebrity is indic...
c4ss.org
November 18, 2025 at 9:06 PM
"We owe it to ourselves to create a world in which rapists are held accountable for their actions and a culture in which human rights violations like rape are viewed as the atrocities they are." - @peacenotpeas.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/39385
c4ss.org/content/39385
"I want to live in a world of peaceful, spontaneous experimentation, where individuals can shape their own political environment; a world with an array of self-actualized communities that create their own social and economic norms." - Joel Williamson
c4ss.org/content/45672
c4ss.org/content/45672
Autonomy and Action
“By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.” – Attributed to...
c4ss.org
November 17, 2025 at 3:47 AM
"I want to live in a world of peaceful, spontaneous experimentation, where individuals can shape their own political environment; a world with an array of self-actualized communities that create their own social and economic norms." - Joel Williamson
c4ss.org/content/45672
c4ss.org/content/45672
"There is, I believe, a substantive sense in which fascism really did emerge from (individualist) anarchism, and that’s as our antithesis." - @rechelon.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/56480
c4ss.org/content/56480
From Stirner to Mussolini
Review: The Anarchist-Individualist Origins of Italian Fascism In 1910 Luigi Fabbri and Armando Borghi abducted an anarchist woman who had shamed their friend by divorcing him. Together, they forced h...
c4ss.org
November 15, 2025 at 11:46 PM
"There is, I believe, a substantive sense in which fascism really did emerge from (individualist) anarchism, and that’s as our antithesis." - @rechelon.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/56480
c4ss.org/content/56480
"What Trump has in mind is clearly a consolidation of power on the model of Hungary’s Victor Orban; but he’s doing everything completely in the wrong order, and as ineptly as humanly possible." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60723
c4ss.org/content/60723
Where Are We At Now?
My Assessment When I wrote my original piece after the election and before Trump took office, I somewhat underestimated how rapid and extensive his power grabs would be. I very badly underestimated ho...
c4ss.org
November 9, 2025 at 11:06 PM
"What Trump has in mind is clearly a consolidation of power on the model of Hungary’s Victor Orban; but he’s doing everything completely in the wrong order, and as ineptly as humanly possible." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60723
c4ss.org/content/60723
"This gives us the radical liberal’s core philosophy of social change: whenever possible, refuse to submit, and enable others to do the same." - @jasonleebyas.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/49939
c4ss.org/content/49939
Radical Liberalism: The Soul of Libertarianism
Libertarianism has lost sight of its soul. This has grown clearer and clearer since Donald Trump announced his improbable campaign for President a little over two years ago. His particular brand of po...
c4ss.org
November 8, 2025 at 12:10 AM
"This gives us the radical liberal’s core philosophy of social change: whenever possible, refuse to submit, and enable others to do the same." - @jasonleebyas.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/49939
c4ss.org/content/49939
"So many anarcho-capitalists and other right-libertarians are falling prey to the allure of fascism, monarchism, white nationalism, and other forms of reactionary authoritarianism." - Eric F.
c4ss.org/content/56712
c4ss.org/content/56712
The Age-Old Question: Is Anarcho-Capitalism Anarchism?
Is anarcho-capitalism a form of anarchism? The resounding cry from anarchists of all stripes—including myself—is NO! The debate rages on, but two questions are raised by this claim: why isn’t it anarc...
c4ss.org
November 6, 2025 at 12:36 AM
"So many anarcho-capitalists and other right-libertarians are falling prey to the allure of fascism, monarchism, white nationalism, and other forms of reactionary authoritarianism." - Eric F.
c4ss.org/content/56712
c4ss.org/content/56712
"Police, prison guards, border patrol agents, soldiers, and other agents of the state beat, choke, shoot, murder, harass, berate, humiliate, assault, and rape people all too often. It’s disgusting. It’s wrong. It’s unacceptable." - @nathanpgoodman.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/54883
c4ss.org/content/54883
Abolition: An Economist’s Perspective
[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] It may seem strange for an economist to write about abolition. After all, economists focus on choices at the...
c4ss.org
November 4, 2025 at 4:41 AM
"Police, prison guards, border patrol agents, soldiers, and other agents of the state beat, choke, shoot, murder, harass, berate, humiliate, assault, and rape people all too often. It’s disgusting. It’s wrong. It’s unacceptable." - @nathanpgoodman.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/54883
c4ss.org/content/54883
"In stressing the unique level of the fascist threat today, we do not deny that it is an outgrowth of strong racist, patriarchal, and authoritarian currents which have existed throughout the country’s history." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60609
c4ss.org/content/60609
When Owning the Libs Trumps Fighting Fascism
Recently Beth, an online anarchist friend, commented that “people’s models for genocide are wrong.” Genocide “rarely looks like the Holocaust,” involving the killing of “thousands and millions in camp...
c4ss.org
November 3, 2025 at 4:53 AM
"In stressing the unique level of the fascist threat today, we do not deny that it is an outgrowth of strong racist, patriarchal, and authoritarian currents which have existed throughout the country’s history." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60609
c4ss.org/content/60609
"Instead of us brushing aside the dust of ages to reveal our own past, artifacts rise from the grave—bursting forth and dragging our history back to us. This is where the zombification comes into play." - Anon
c4ss.org/content/51845
c4ss.org/content/51845
Night of the Living ‘Things’: Zombie Archaeology
If capitalism is good at anything, it is making things. I mean “things” not in an ontological or otherwise formal sense but more in the manner that declutter gurus use it: general assorted human-made ...
c4ss.org
October 31, 2025 at 8:58 PM
"Instead of us brushing aside the dust of ages to reveal our own past, artifacts rise from the grave—bursting forth and dragging our history back to us. This is where the zombification comes into play." - Anon
c4ss.org/content/51845
c4ss.org/content/51845
"While hierarchical firms do result in fewer transaction costs, this comes at the expense of stifling the localized and tacit knowledge that workers have in guiding the firm." - @zacharywoodman.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60672
c4ss.org/content/60672
Self-Employment, Workplace Democracy, and Moral Theory
What Matt Zwolinski Gets Wrong About Left-Libertarianism Over at The Bleeding Heart Libertarian,1 Matt Zwolinski has a recent post about what we left libertarians get right and get wrong. According to...
c4ss.org
October 30, 2025 at 3:46 AM
"While hierarchical firms do result in fewer transaction costs, this comes at the expense of stifling the localized and tacit knowledge that workers have in guiding the firm." - @zacharywoodman.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60672
c4ss.org/content/60672
"The very logic of production now permeates all aspects of life, turning even our emotions and most private experiences into commodities in the digital marketplace." - Alexander Migursky
c4ss.org/content/60836
c4ss.org/content/60836
Alienation, Deprivation, and Play
In trying to understand the moral paralysis that undermines the revolutionary energy so essential to our collective survival—an energy that has no real place within the narrow ideological confines of ...
c4ss.org
October 28, 2025 at 7:12 PM
"The very logic of production now permeates all aspects of life, turning even our emotions and most private experiences into commodities in the digital marketplace." - Alexander Migursky
c4ss.org/content/60836
c4ss.org/content/60836
"'Revolution' is not an event, but an ongoing process that never ends." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60834
c4ss.org/content/60834
Book Review: Red Moon
I had Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Moon on my Goodreads to-read list for a long time, mainly because I’m a fan of his other work and the title sounded evocative. But I put off reading it time and again ...
c4ss.org
October 23, 2025 at 4:44 AM
"'Revolution' is not an event, but an ongoing process that never ends." - @kevincarson1.bsky.social
c4ss.org/content/60834
c4ss.org/content/60834