Articles by Kevin Carson
A “Political” Program for Anarchists
Kevin Carson · Many anarchists oppose in principle such use of the political process for anarchist ends. It is unethical, they say, for anarchists to participate in the political process. Voting entails selecting a representative to exercise coercive...
“Heritage Not Hate”: A Lie With Any Flag
Kevin Carson · Images circulated, in the aftermath of Dylann Roof’s racially motivated mass shooting at the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, included not only numerous pictures of Roof brandishing the Confederate battle flag but...
Who Owns the Benefit? The Free Market as Full Communism
Kevin Carson · There’s a wonderful phrase for how capitalism works in the real world (I’m not sure who first came up with it, but I associate it with Noam Chomsky): “The socialization of risk and cost, and the privatization of profit.”
You Had One Job, UN
Kevin Carson · The United Nations has been back in the news lately. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlights the importance of the UN’s mission in this “time of turmoil.” But maybe we should take a closer look at what that “mission” is. The avowed...
How Not to Fight the 1%
Kevin Carson · In an article that will no doubt make “progressive” hearts go pitty-pat (“The 1% May Be Richer Than You Think, Research Shows,” Bloomberg, August 7), Jeanna Smialek suggests that top 1%’s wealth is far greater even than official...
On The Worship Of Authority: Local Police Forces are Sordid Empires of Criminality
Kevin Carson · On Monday, January 13, two Fullerton, California police officers charged with the beating death of Kelly Thomas were acquitted, and the prosecutor announced his decision not to press charges against a third officer involved. Millions...
Infrastructure Is Not “Progressive": Railroads and Highways All Created to Serve Corporate Economy
Kevin Carson · Frankly, I have a hard time understanding what goes on in the heads of “progressives.” On the one hand, they constantly complain — and rightfully so — about the power of big business and corporate domination of our society and...
On "Reforms," Bad and Good
Kevin Carson · “Reformism” is one of those words that’s hard to pin down sometimes. It’s usually taken to mean advocating for “reform within the system” — in other words, the bad kind of reform.
Real Libertarians Don't Shill For The Kochs
Kevin Carson · It’s been the thing lately, among certain establishment liberals, to dismiss libertarians as “Koch-funded shills.” We’ve heard a lot of it from Mark Ames and Yasha Levine at NSFWCorp, for example.
Cops Get "Protected and Served," Don't Like It
Kevin Carson · Thomas Nestel, the Philadelphia Transit Authority police chief, is aghast over the refusal of bystanders to help a transit cop — Sam Wellington — being beaten up by one of their fellow citizens that he’d been trying to arrest. “I was...
'World Government' Is a Real Thing, But There Is No 'New World Order' Conspiracy Behind It
Kevin Carson · Kevin Carson dismisses the NWO conspiracy theory narrative of world government, which in many ways resembles a kind of 'cartoon evil' as it is often depicted. There is a more grounded way to look at it.
The Government Shutdown Opportunity: Public Workers Ignore Washington and Reorganize Cooperatively
Kevin Carson · Cory Doctorow, guest of honor at the upcoming FenCon science fiction convention in Dallas, notes (“During the shutdown, some scientists can’t talk about science,” Boing Boing, October 4) that some of his fellow speakers will be unable...
Capitalism: A Good Word for a Bad Thing
Kevin Carson · The Freeman editor Sheldon Richman, speaking at George Mason University, raised the question of just what mainstream libertarians mean when they call a country “capitalist.”  What qualifies a country as “capitalist”?
The Subsidy of History
Kevin Carson · Carson indicts historically existing capitalism as a betrayal, rather than a manifestation, of free-market libertarian principles. He points out that libertarians have typically focused on the role of state coercion in the...
Commodified Rebellion for the Wage-Slave
Kevin Carson · Via Ross Heckmann on the Distributism yahoogroup. A quote from the Agrarian Wendell Berry’s book 
Unequal Contracts, Unequal Power
Kevin Carson · As of January 26, it’s illegal to unlock your cell phone and switch to a different service plan without the permission of your current provider. This comes as the result not of a new law, but of the opinion of the Librarian of Congress...
A (Brief) People's History of Gun Control
Kevin Carson · From its very beginning, gun control — the attempt to regulate the possession of means of self-defense by the ordinary populace — has been closely associated with class rule and the class state.
Open-Source Healthcare
Kevin Carson · The healthcare industry is a textbook example of what Ivan Illich (in Tools for Conviviality) called a “radical monopoly.” The central function of the government’s “safety” and “consumer protection” regulations, in most cases, is...