On Friday the 12th I’m off to Prague for the PCPE (which means I’ll unfortunately miss most of the ASC here in Auburn, though I do plan to drop in on the first day, the 11th).
The PCPE doesn’t actually start until the 19th, but its coinciding with my spring break means I can spend a little extra time, so once I arrive in Prague I’ll be off by train to spend a (frustratingly brief) couple of days in Vienna, thus making this trip doubly Austrian.
I’ve been to Prague before, but this’ll be my first trip to Vienna. I’ve wanted to see Vienna for a long time; even before Mises, Hayek, and Wittgenstein entered my life, it was the city of Die Fledermaus and The Third Man (to pick two rather different visions of the city). When I first started the Austro-Athenian Empire, I’d been to neither Austria nor Athens; by next week I’ll have seen both!
After Vienna, back to marvelous Prague and the PCPE, where I’ll be giving a paper on Platonic Pitfalls for Austro-Libertarians – in which I sadden Rothbardians by venting my heresies on fractional-reserve banking and the productivity theory of wages, but then cheer them up with some anarchy at the end. (Readers of my blog have seen most of this stuff before.)
After that I’ll be staying over a couple of extra days for still more anarchy, i.e. to give a talk on the 23rd at the CEVRO Institute (a college run by a free-market think tank and headed up by libertarian activist Josef Šima, who’s also one of the organizers of the PCPE) on Why Classical Liberals Should Prefer Anarchy Over State Power. (No prepared text, but I’ll probably cover much of the same territory as in my ten objections talk.) I’ll return to the u.s. on the 24th.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first mention of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left by the Associated Press. (CHT Charles.) Typically for the mainstream press, the story gets something wrong (two things, actually), but it’s still pretty cool.
Charles Johnson’s excellent essay “Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism,” which appeared in the anarchism/minarchism anthology that Tibor Machan and I edited, is now available online.
Read it now, or the statists win.
Gary Chartier is offering an introductory online course on anarchism under the auspices of the Molinari Institute’s Center for a Stateless Society. Check it out.
Are you a libertarian anarchist swept up in Free State Project hype? Can’t get your head around “Free State” being an oxymoron but still want in on all that FSP fun? Don’t sweat it. The FSP isn’t just for minarchists anymore. It’s also ripe for anarchist co-option.
Fertile Ground
Many, if not most, FSP members are minarchists. They get liberty, at least partially. So, in the best case, they’re fertile ground for anarchist outreach and in the worst case they’re statists who will think twice before aggressing against us. Also, these folks have a good bit of spare time in their liberty activism programs. They only vote a couple times per year. Throw in a few big protests and their schedules are wide open for direct action, counter-economics and self-improvement.
Anarchist Projects Well Underway
Some anarchist projects are already well underway. There are rumors of an active agorist culture. Plans for an agoristic marketplace at the Porcupine Festival this summer can be seen on Facebook. Free Keene appears to be populated largely by voluntaryists, agorists, spoonerites and other anarchists. The Alternatives Expo is going on its fourth year of giving the Liberty Forum a run for its money, with non-political, practical and independence-minded presentations available alongside the big-ticket Liberty Forum headliners.
Wanted: Buyers and Sellers
So if you’re a voluntaryist, agorist, Spoonerite, Thoreauvian or any other kind of market anarchist or an-cap, come on up to New Hampshire! The new society is actively forming in the shell of the old. More buyers and sellers are needed. At least, check out the AltExpo and PorcFest!
Photo credit: Moosealope. Photo license.
If you enjoy the Center for a Stateless Society’s commentaries (and if you’re lucky enough to be above water financially), please consider donating to the C4SS first quarter fundraiser, which looks to be falling short. Otherwise you’ll only have half as much anarchy ….
It takes the perspicacity of a Glenn Beck to detect them.
Colin Ward disguised as Jimmy Carter
I’m saddened to learn that Colin Ward has died.
Jesse Walker has rightly called Ward’s Anarchy in Action the left-wing equivalent of The Machinery of Freedom.
Ward may or may not have called anarchy the cement that holds the bricks of society together, but the quote is a nice summary of his outlook – that spontaneous, voluntary, non-hierarchical cooperation is all around us, in the interstices of statist society, routing around authority to get things done.
