Market Anarchist Blogs

Charles Johnson is both inviting participants and raising money for the Southern Nevada branch of ALL to have a presence at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair next month. This is an outreach-to-the-antistatist-left event, to complement the outreach-to-the-antistatist-right event we’ll be involved in a month later.

I wish I could go, but I’ll be in Prague. But – want to go to San Francisco and hang out with anarchists? Or want to donate for this worthy cause? Details here.

Well, no. I’m not really lost. But I’m in the Andes alright. And my computer cable is lost, although lost isn’t the right word. Swiped is. As in, swiped by some blighter who grabbed it out from me while I was, of all things, trying to check my stuff into the left luggage. May it blow up [...]

• Anarchists in Space. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-07). Paul Raven reviews Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel The Dispossessed, a tale of the confrontation between an anarcho-syndicalist culture and a state-capitalist culture. (CHT François.) Though Le Guin’s personal sympathies were with the anarchists, she doesn’t stack the deck (unlike most political science fiction): the anarcho-syndicalist culture is actually... (Linked Monday 2010-02-08.)
• Comment on Anarchists in Space by Roderick. Roderick, Comments for Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-02-08). Back in 1980, when Broach came out, perhaps Kolko’s Triumph of Conservatism or Railroads and Regulation, and then follow it up with stuff from Left & Right and the early years of Libertarian Forum. If it were nowadays, Kevin Carson’s books would obviously be essential. The crucial point is this:... (Linked Monday 2010-02-08.)

The Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair is going to be held the weekend of March 13-14 in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park. It’s a great time; it’s also one of the largest annual Anarchist community events in North America. And I’m in the process of organizing a table for A.L.L. at the bookfair.

In addition to a great lineup of speakers, panels and workshops, the main event (this is a bookfair, after all) will be the space in main hall with dozens of vendors with tables to show off their Anarchist books and materials from 10:00am–6:00pm on Saturday, March 13 and 11:00am–5:00pm on Sunday, March 14. Among them will be us — members of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left from Vegas, California, and around the Western U.S. I’ll be there, along with fellow Anarchists from Southern Nevada ALL. We’ll have books, journals, buttons, and more from the Southern Nevada ALL Distro available for sale as fundraisers, along with a lot of free pamphlets, smaller pieces to give away, and information about ALL as an organization and what we do back in our hometowns.

This will be Southern Nevada A.L.L.’s third appearance at an Anarchist bookfair (after appearances at last year’s Bay Area bookfair, and this year’s Los Angeles bookfair). These bookfairs are a real blast to work: partly because the bookfair a great opportunity to make connections with fellow Anarchists and to get the good word out about individualist anarchism, market anarchism, mutualism, counter-economics, to an audience of engaged radicals and movement anarchists. And also because, for a dispersed, Internet-coordinated network like the A.L.L., working the bookfair table is great opportunity to posse up with ALLies from many different towns, meet folks you’ve only known online, have some great conversations, and work together on some practical counter-economic outreach. (It’s also a good opportunity for local organizing on the ground — since we can put out a sign-up sheet and get contacts for people who are interested in ALLiance in the Bay Area.)

Anyway. If all this sounds like something you’re down with, interested in, excited by, here’s three things you can do:

1. If you’re in the Bay Area, or will be around March 13-14, drop on by the table and say hi and see what we’re doing.

2. If you’ll be there and you’re interested in selling books or merchandise for your hometown Alliance of the Libertarian Left local — or if you’re interested in hanging out with ALLies from other towns and helping with the table — then get in touch with me to coordinate. We’ll definitely have space for you, and it’d be great to posse up.

3. If you want to help support the A.L.L. presence at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair (and other bookfairs in the future), you can help us out by covering the costs of the table and the transport. Bound Together Books just recently boosted the cost of reserving a table (last year it was $100 for both days; now it’s $150). We’re doing this on as thin a shoestring as possible. With support from y’ALL, we can make the most of these opportunities to do local organizing, make connections between our locals, and put the word out and about among our fellow Anarchists.

   Here’s the shoestring, for reference.

   ALL @ Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair 2010 shoestring budget

   Cost	Description
   $150	Table reservation (Saturday and Sunday)
   $87	Car rental for transport from Vegas (driving up Friday; returning car Monday).
   $86	Cheap hotel in Bay Area (Friday and Saturday night)
   ~$0~	Gas costs will be covered by carpooling ALLies and our allies from Vegas up to the Bookfair and to the Empowering Women of Color conference, which is being held at UC Berkeley the same weekend. Food costs will be covered through Food Not Bombs.
   $333	Total costs

Hope to see y’ALL there!

At work, there was a “meet the new boss” meeting. He actually seemed decent. He asked everyone to explain their background and what they’re working on. He seemed genuinely interested.After about 20 minutes, my boss’ boss came to the meeting. Then, …

Continue reading at FSK's Guide to Reality …

The ads for the Super Bowl were pretty lousy. They weren't very interesting. Maybe I'm becoming more resistant to State propaganda. Advertising campaigns usually target stupid people, rather than intelligent people.

This ad was simultaneously amusing and offensive. A man was arrested for throwing out a battery. A man was arrested for using incandescent light bulbs. The ad was intended as a pro-State advertisement. I thought it was an example of an out-of-control State. It really was a car commercial. I couldn't tell if they were serious "People who use incandescent light bulbs *SHOULD* be arrested!" or sarcastic.

The "environmental movement" is really a bunch of pro-State trolling. Most "save the environment" laws really are just restricting freedom. For example, incandescent light bulbs are not patented. By banning incandescent light bulbs, that is huge corporate welfare for the insiders who own the compact fluorescent patents. "Agorist incandescent light bulb manufacturer" is a business I'd support. That commercial says that someone who starts such a business should be violently raided.

Ironically, compact fluorescent light bulbs are an environmental hazard. They contain mercury, and must be properly discarded. That point was not emphasized in the commercial.

It was also offensive to see the US census advertising. Should State parasites be allowed to directly advertise?

The E*Trade ads had a hidden pro-State message. The ad says "The stock market is a good investment!" in addition to advising you to use E*Trade.

I didn't notice any ads saying "Support our troops!" That was interesting. Now that Obama is President, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over! By no longer covering war, that means it's over!

My mother has an interesting conspiracy theory. She says "The Super Bowl was fixed so that New Orleans won! Now, they can say 'Look at how well New Orleans recovered after Katrina!'" I'm not sure about that one, but who knows?

Am I the only one who finds this a little too close to reality to be funny? That I can see this being a not too distant future is pretty frightening. Why not? It’s pretty much the way the state approaches everything for the “greater good.”

Of course, the message doesn’t seem to involve any question about the legitimacy of such an approach. Just buy an Audi and you will have nothing to fear! The rest of you deserve what you get.

Filed under: Anarchism, Culture, Miscellany

Sarah Palin’s Tea Party speech felt like something out of a romantic-comedy.

We’ve seen it a thousand times before. The guy and girl meet each other, fall madly in love, but before long there’s a misunderstanding. There’s always a misunderstanding. Like the guy gets jealous after seeing the girl with another guy—even though, unbeknownst to him, the other guy is really just the girl’s brother. Or the girl sees the guy kissing another girl—turns out that the other girl forced herself on the guy and he was actually trying to push her away.

Yes, there’s always a misunderstanding, one that prevents the protagonists from getting together until the film’s last five minutes—at which point everything gets cleared-up, they say their sorries, and end up passionately necking as the closing credits begin to roll.

Well the Sarah Palin love story is no different.

Cast as the female lead is, of course, our girl Sarah, cute hockey mom, killer legs, major league milf. Her counterpart is played by none other than our Harvard-educated, cigarette-smoking stud of a president, Barry Obama. Everyone knows it’s just a matter of time before these two get together, hook up to form some political action committee or something like that. But, as in all good love stories, before they connect, there’s a misunderstanding.

Turns out that Sarah profoundly misunderstands Barry's policies. For instance, she thinks Barry wants to give constitutional protections to terror suspects. And she thinks Barry has turned his back on Israel and that he’s been playing softball with Iran and that he opposes having a strong national defense.

Because of these misunderstandings, Sarah is getting nasty with Barry, lashing out at him in public. She lambasted him for all these things during her speech on Saturday. Kind of reminds me of that scene in Bridget Jones 2 when Bridget sees Mark drinking wine with his lesbian secretary, but, of course, Bridget doesn’t know the secretary is a lesbian, so she gets really jealous and blows up at Mark. Remember that? Well that’s essentially what’s going on here. Just a big misunderstanding.

If Sarah would have done her homework, she would have learned that Barry is just as much of an evil, racist, warmongering imperialist as she is. She thinks Barry wants to give constitutional protections to terror suspects? Hah! Doesn’t she follow the news? Doesn’t she know that Barry’s policies are essentially the same as George W. Bush’s? Doesn’t she know that, like Bush, Barry believes he has the right to indefinitely detain suspects, preventing their cases from ever being tried in court? Doesn’t she know that he has continued Bush’s extraordinary rendition policy? Doesn’t she know that, under Barry, detainees continue getting tortured? Doesn’t she have a clue that Barry reviles the Constitution every bit as much as she does?

And she thinks Barry has turned his back on Israel? She must not know that he’s done his part to block the Goldstone Report, you know the UN report documenting Israeli war crimes in Gaza. And she must not know that US aid to Israel has grown since he’s taken office.

And of course Barry hasn’t played softball with Iran. Had he being playing softball with Iran, he would have honored the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—which, by the way, he’s legally required to abide by—and recognized that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But instead he’s denied it this right and spent the past several weeks pushing for sanctions.

And of course Barry believes in a strong national defense. Strong national offense really, which should really get Sarah all wet between the legs. Since taking office, he’s escalated the war in Afghanistan, escalated drone strikes in Pakistan, and increased spending on national defense—I mean, national offense.

So enough, Sarah. Enough of this name-calling. Like I said, it’s all just a big misunderstanding. Barry’s your man. You’re his girl. When you get down to it, ya’ll are just a couple of peas in a pod. So will you just stop you’re fighting and make up already?

Paul Raven reviews Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel The Dispossessed, a tale of the confrontation between an anarcho-syndicalist culture and a state-capitalist culture. (CHT François.) Though Le Guin’s personal sympathies were with the anarchists, she doesn’t stack the deck (unlike most political science fiction): the anarcho-syndicalist culture is actually pretty sucky. But the state-capitalist culture is even suckier. (I didn’t say it was a cheerful book. But it’s a very good book.)

Related whereunto, some random items:

• There’s a book of essays titled The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. I haven’t read it; but apparently Le Guin liked it and contributed an essay herself.
• L. Neil Smith semi-dedicated his anarcho-capitalist novel The Probability Broach to Le Guin and The Dispossessed. (At least that’s true of the first edition; I don’t have the revised edition handy.) He also commends Hayek’s Capitalism and the Historians to Le Guin’s attention in order to nudge her toward a more favourable attitude to property. (I gotta say, that’s not the book I would have picked for that purpose.)
• I’ve long suspected that Ken MacLeod’s The Cassini Division, with its confrontation between a flawed but functional anarcho-capitalist society and a flawed but functional anarcho-communist society, was partly inspired by Le Guin’s book.
• One of Le Guin’s last works, The Telling, deals with Taoist-inspired communities struggling under an oppressive system variously described by reviewers as a “tightly controlled capitalist government” and a “soulless form of corporate communism.” I haven’t read it yet either.

Addendum: I remembered something else I’d intended to mention: in addition to Ken MacLeod’s The Cassini Division being partly inspired by The Dispossessed in its theme, I’ve wondered whether MacLeod’s earlier novel The Stone Canal might be partly inspired by The Dispossessed in its narrative structure, with one storyline being told through the odd-numbered chapters while a “flashback” background story, featuring the same viewpoint character – in both cases an anarchist scholar – runs through the even-numbered chapters (though of course other writers have done such things as well).