Bleg: C4SS April fundraiser

As I've mentioned here fairly frequently, I work with the Center for a Stateless Society as its "senior news analyst."

The "senior" part means that I've been with C4SS for longer than some of the other "news analysts." The "news analyst" part means that I contribute two op-ed columns a week, for which I am compensated.

So, this is not a disinterested bleg. But I think it's a justified one. More on why after I flash the fundraiser graphic:



Two reasons (of many) why C4SS deserves your support:

- Most libertarian think tanks and policy institutes are either avowedly minarchist, or soft-pedal any anarchist tendencies, or at best keep the anarchist stuff to a minimum in their mix of offerings. C4SS is unabashedly anarchist. We put the "delenda est" in "Carthago delenda est" -- substitute any state you like for Carthage. That's a niche in the libertarian ideological eco-system that needs to be filled. We're filling it.

- In The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard warned the libertarian movement against "right opportunism" and "left sectarianism." One possibility he apparently didn't anticipate was that the movement would come under the sway of a curious "right sectarianism" -- a sort of reactionary fetishism. Kevin Carson (who also works with C4SS) has described one symptom of this sectarianism as "vulgar libertarianism." I've described another symptom as "bourgeois libertarianism."

To put a finer point on it, a large segment of the libertarian movement has effectively self-ghettoized itself into a niche on the political "right" in various ways, rejecting the movement's original position on, and rich history in, the political "left."

If the reactions of these ... hell, I'm tempted to call them "self-hating libertarians," but let's be polite and just go with "right libertarians" ... to C4SS is any indication, we're beginning to break down the ghetto walls.

We're articulating the "libertarian class theory" of Comte and Dunoyer; the insights of Molinari on non-state provision of "public goods;" the bankruptcy of the notion that a state-regulated, mixed industrial economy ("capitalism") is compatible with free markets.

And so on and so forth.

The howls from within the ghetto are increasing in volume, if not in coherence. Only time will tell whether the ghetto residents choose to exit the ghetto at our end (where we're busting a hole in the wall to help them escape), or at the other end (where the boxcars are waiting).

Or heck, maybe they'll convince us to come into the ghetto. I doubt it, but hey, you never know.

Either way, busting that hole in the wall is a worthy endeavor, and I hope you'll help keep us in sledgehammers, so to speak.