The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS.org) is an anarchist think-tank and media center. Its mission is to explain and defend the idea of vibrant social cooperation without aggression, oppression, or centralized authority.
Joining me today is Aaron Ross Powell. Aaron is currently the director of Liberal Projects at the Institute for Humane Studies where he is the chief editor of Liberalism.org and host of the Liberalism.org podcast as well as Reimagining Liberty. I wanted to have Aaron on today to discuss two seemingly disparate intellectual interests of his: Buddhism and libertarianism. To many, these may seem like disparate and unrelated interests, or perhaps two intellectual traditions that are in deep tension with each other metaphysically. After all, libertarianism is often understood as relying on a strong conception of self-ownership, and Buddhism famously questions the very idea of selfhood to begin with. I wanted to sit down with Aaron to work through how he thinks of the relationship between Buddhist ethics and metaphysics, and the political project of human liberation, as well as the relationship between religious tolerance and liberal politics more generally.
Welcome to Mutual Exchange Radio, a project of the Center for a Stateless Society. I am your host, Zachary Woodman. Today's guest—for the third time on MER—is Kevin Carson. Kevin probably needs no introduction, but he is a senior fellow of the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org) and holds the Center's Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory. He is an anarchist without adjectives, heavily influenced by autonomism and the new municipalist movements. His written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, and The Desktop Regulatory State all of which are freely available online. Carson has also written for such print publications as The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty and a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things and The Art of the Possible, as well as his own blogs, Mutualist Blog and Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. Today, I Kevin is on to discuss his 2021 study on the Methodenstreit between economists from the Austrian school, such as Carl Menger, and economists from the German Historical School, such as Gustav Schmoller. We discuss Carson's views on the methodology of the social sciences in general and political economy in particular as well as his views on interest, landlordism, and the American Institutionalist school.
Today my guest is Matthew McManus. Matt McManus is an incoming assistant professor of political theory at Spellman College. He is the author of The Political Right and Equality as well as The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, which we are discussing today. McManus sees himself as engaging in a project of retrieval of a forgotten tradition of thought within the liberal tradition which advocates for socialist ends. This is a project with which I have some affinity as a liberal anarchist, but I have some big disagreements with how he sees the difference between liberal socialists and other more pro-market liberals as well as the institutional form he thinks liberal socialism should take: a form of statist social democracy. You will see us get into those disagreements at the end of the discussion.
Show Notes
Matthew McMannus, The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism
Jason Lee Byas, Radical Liberalism: The Soul of Libertarianism
Judith Shklar, The Liberalism of Fear
Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries
David Dyzenhaus, Hobbes and the Law
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
Isaac Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society
Helen McCabe, John Stuart Mill, Socialist
Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Hayek, Marx, and Utopia
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
David Prychitko, Marxism and Workers' Self-Management: The Essential Tension
Karl Marx, The Civil War in France
Gary Chartier, Radicalizing Rawls
Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
FA Hayek, Individualism True and False
Gus Dizerga, Outgrowing Methodological Individualism
Tony Smith, Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism
Kevin Carson, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
Fabio Perocco, Racism In and For the Welfare State
Quinn Slobodian, Hayek's Bastards
Kjell Östberg, The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy
Pelle Dragsted, Nordic Socialism
John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
Wendy Brown, Walled States: Waning Sovereignty
Zachary Woodman, Alex McHugh, and Nathan Goodman join Cory Massimino for a panel on Trump's authoritarian actions on immigration, the history of immigration control and regulation, and what you can do to resist the administration's authoritarian xenophobia.
Show notes and Sources:
Zachary Woodman's Segment on the Trump Administration's Actions on Immigration So Far
Nathan's Segment on the History of US Border Policy:
Alex McHugh's Segment on Resisting ICE:
This episode is hosted by C4SS's Elinor Ostrom Chair in the Study of Self Governance, Nathan Goodman. Nathan is joined by Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall for a deep dive into the authors' new book, How to Run Wars, A Confidential Playbook for the National Security Elite, available from June 18th on Amazon, or through the Independent Institute. E-book versions are available for Kindle, Apple iBooks, and Barnes and Noble Nook and links are available in the show notes below.
Christopher Coyne is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, the Associate Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center, and the Director of the Initiative for the Study of a Stable Peace (ISSP) through the Hayek Program. He is the Co-Editor of The Review of Austrian Economics and of The Independent Review.
Abigail R. Hall is an Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Tampa in Tampa, Florida. She is an affiliated scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California. She is a Non-Resident Fellow with Defense Priorities and a Public Choice and Public Policy Fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research. She earned her PhD in Economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
This episode of MER features Alex McHugh interviewing John Cavanaugh of the digital-privacy organization, The Plunk Foundation.
The Plunk Foundation promotes digital data privacy through education, advocacy, and policy recommendations, and by developing privacy tools and tech. Our conversation ranges from the deeper discussion on consent and privacy as related to self-ownership, to the more practical question of how to ethically navigate today's digital landscape and the potential for privacy-focused tech.
John Cavanaugh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/privacy-evangelist/
Email: [email protected]
Support C4SS podcasts on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c4ssdotorg
This episode brings Austrian economics into the gender identity discussion. We get into a lot of messy and fascinating questions about gender, identity, and social structures.
Read the paper here: https://cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/malamet_novak_ct_vol11_iss11_12_epub.pdf
Mikayla Novak is senior fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is the author of Inequality: An Entangled Political Economy Perspective (2018) and Freedom in Contention: Social Movements and Liberal Political Economy (2021). Her research work has been published in a range of academic journals, including Research Policy, Constitutional Political Economy, Review of Austrian Economics, Journal of Institutional Economics, and Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice. Mikayla's research interests include Austrian and evolutionary economics, public choice, entangled political economy, economic sociology, public finance, and regulatory economics.
And listeners will recognize Akiva Malamet, a returning guest to the show. Akiva previously appeared on our June 2020 episode of Mutual Exchange Radio to discuss his work on Nationalism and Identity Formation. He is a contributing editor at Unpopulist and an MA candidate at Queens University, and a long-time friend of C4SS.
Cory Massimino chats with Jason Lee Byas about public choice theory, reparations (for slavery and other injustices), and war. Jason Lee Byas is a fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society and a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Michigan. His academic work focuses on punishment (and its alternatives), rights theory, and justice beyond the state.
Alex McHugh interviews sci-fi author Dennis Danvers on anarchist ideas in fiction, his books The Watch and Leaving the Dead, and the life of a writer.
Mr. Danvers has written a variety of well-received sci-fi novels, including Circuit of Heaven, Time and Time Again, and End of Days, as well as the Locus and Bram Stoker nominee Wilderness. His short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Space and Time, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, F & SF, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, Lightspeed, Tor.com, See the Elephant, Apex Magazine; and in anthologies Tails of Wonder, Richmond Noir, The Best of Electric Velocipede, Remapping Richmond's Hallowed Ground, and Nightmare Carnival. He taught fiction writing and science fiction and fantasy literature at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia for over thirty years.
A wide-ranging interview with acclaimed anarchist activist and musician, scott crow (https://www.scottcrow.org/). Alex McHugh hosts, with the first half focusing on scott's music and media project, eMERGENCY heARTS, and the latter on his previous work on theories of liberatory community armed self-defense.
* Content note: scott and I talk about the murder of Garrett Foster in the second half of this episode. It comes up in a discussion about the strategic value (or lack thereof) of open carry at protests.
In this episode of Mutual Exchange Radio, Tux discusses their unique take on cryptocurrency, the connection between markets and anarchism, and being anti-capitalist in a capitalist world.
Tux Pacific (they/she) is a cryptographer, anarchist, and the founder of Entropy, a decentralized custodian for crypto. Their crypto-inclusive perspective has been shaped by their non-traditional background as a trans person and a market post-left-ish anarchist. You can reach Tux on Twitter @__tux or via email [email protected]