by Sean Jobst
4 June 2021
I am a philosophical Anarchist. For as long as I've thought politically, it was always outside the "mainstream" left-right paradigm. I've instinctively known that paradigm is founded upon a series of wrong assumptions elevated to dogmas, related to the very nature of the State, economics, and those mortal (psychopathic and power-crazed for sure, but too often idiotic and short-sighted) elites worshipped as "authority" by a manipulated public. Although I have been influenced by one or another specific school of Anarchism, I use the broad adjective "philosophical" here because for me its foremost about metaphysics, metapolitics and spirituality more than politics and economics.
I previously blogged about both my anarchist and spiritual journeys, the two often intertwining as indeed all disciplines should be approached holistically so we may truly know ourselves. So it is that aside from my work during that time (2008-2011) on foreign policy/interventionism, Native American issues, and historical preservation, I was firmly opposed to usury and the rigged banking system - coming as it was at the height of the Neoliberal Obama administration bailing out Big Banks and Big Business with the stolen wealth ("taxes") of the working- and middle- classes; and nurtured as I was by the higher consciousness sparked by the Ron Paul campaign.
Around that same time, I became a Sufi and was initiated into the Shadhili-Darqawi Tariqa of the Murabitun movement through its American branch. Even now as a Germanic/Celtiberian Pagan who has rejected the entire Abrahamic paradigm (having drank from my own deeper ancestral well-spring), I look back at that experience with pride and contentment. It was a spiritual transition within Islam, but it was no accident their movement against riba (usury) and the bankers, and for decentralized communities, guilds, and currencies backed by tangible metals (rather than the artificial fiat currency), meshed well with my own Anarchism. They provided a truly-spiritual framework against the State and banking system, allowing us to see Statism and Economics as a new religion or cult.
I was and continue to be inspired by the Mutualist tradition of Joseph-Pierre Proudhon, the American Individualist Anarchism of Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, the radical Libertarian writings of Murray Rothbard....which I further melded with those alternative European thinkers (such as Julius Evola and Ernst Jünger) whose thinking is best conceived as metapolitical/metaphysical....and coming full circle with the tribal, community-based perspective of the National Anarchist movement. The latter has especially intensified with my Paganism - in hindsight, my thinking and spirituality was headed towards that direction and there were elements of it even then, because it is most innate and natural. (Such as with the article below about “Indigenous traditions”).
So it is that I republish my articles from 2008-2011, on various aspects of Anarchism, usury, and economics. My efforts to give a Sufi interpretation of Anarchism worked for me then, although I obviously reject it now - while still respecting those people who read a decentralist, anti-Statist perspective into their various religions. For example, the insights on "technique" by the Christian Anarchist Jacques Ellul are brilliant and essential. Individuals will always bring their own distinctive personalities and worldview to their belief systems. Still its undeniable that the tribal foundations of Pagan faiths are most compatible with Anarchism (or, rather, anarchism is the political view most compatible to a tribal, Pagan worldview).
The distinction between "Capitalism" and free-market is still something I grapple with, because in our own American context (in contrast to the European) the term itself is closely-related with individual rights and the free-market, but also used by the Banking and Big Business beneficiaries of Statism. At the other end is the necessity to differentiate from the Marxist critique of free-markets and individual rights under the name "Capitalism", whereas the same financial interests have always been behind that dialectic as well (coalescing now with the Woke Capitalism of corporations). When I look at what Rothbard and the Anarcho-Capitalists advocate, I find more areas to agree than disagree, so perhaps the difference is only semantic. Aside from these two points, the following articles need no commentary....
- A Brief Explanation of Proudhon
- Sufic Notes on Proudhon, Rothbard, and Anarchism
- A Brief Tribute of Ezra Pound
- A Basic Introduction to the Four Monopolies
- An organic understanding of money
- Indigenous traditions around the world oppose usury
- Capitalism is a religion
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A Brief Explanation of Proudhon
April 25, 2009
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| Joseph Pierre Proudhon |
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was a leading French intellectual, one of the early precursors of anarchism. He coined the slogans "Anarchy is Order" and "Property is theft." The movement which grew from his writings is Mutualism. The mutualists are anarchists who propose individualist means to build a new non-Statist society as opposed to the communitarian means proposed by Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and the majority of campus or single-cause anarchists: those who have bowed to political correctness, adopted Marxist rhetoric, and who are mostly spoiled rich kids living in ivory towers without knowing what it means to sweat.
The difference here is key: Proudhon was consistently anti-Marxist, and Marx wrote a criticism of Proudhon entitled The Poverty of Philosophy, to which he had initially wanted to respond but was sidetracked by the revolutions in Paris in 1848. Proudhon knew that the Marxists were merely opposing one form of authoritarianism to replace with their own authoritarianism. He saw that they worshipped violence for the sake of violence, or nihilism. He also opposed their theory of dialectical socialism. Unlike the capitalists Marx and Engels, Proudhon came from a peasant background and actually had to spend the rest of his life struggling.
Proudhon has had a remarkable influence on those who consider themselves Mutualists/left-libertarians/individualist anarchists/market anarchists (these terms are often used interchangeably by its adherents). The works of Proudhon were brought to America and influenced the individualist anarchist tradition which served as an important inspiration to Murray Rothbard's thought.
These trends make a sharp distinction between Capitalism and the free-market, pointing out how the former has always practiced state intervention in the markets to secure or perpetuate the monopolies of a certain corporate/financial elite. This is an important distinction which is especially lacking here in America, where the conservatives/Republicans and right-wing "libertarians" pay lip-service to "laissez faire" and "the free market", but are nothing but apologists for the big corporations and financial interests.
The only difference between the economic policies of American liberals and conservatives is that the former disguise their state-intervention in terms of helping the disadvantaged and pursuing social welfare programs, while the latter pursue their state-intervention to secure corporate monopolies in the name of "the free market". But the idea is the same: more state intervention from which only the corporations, financiers and professional political elite can profit.
Proudhon's maxim that "Anarchy is Order" brings to the surface a deep metaphysical reality latent until then. For he recognized that economics was a new religion and that economic ideas would become deified on an altar of ritualistic servitude. The masses are conditioned to believe that usury and taxation are two necessities of life (i.e., the old adage that nothing is certain except for death and taxes, and the fact that the Federal Reserve's manipulation of interest rates is accepted as a gospel truth by those in awe of the economists).
In his book The Esoteric Deviation in Islam (CapeTown: Madinah Press, 2003), Umar Ibrahim Vadillo has pointed out that the deification of economics has an esoteric underpinning. The rise of the State cannot be divorced from the rise of the modern bank. The two have a symbiotic relation, as both derive from esoteric origins. The State serves to perpetuate Finance, and vice versa. To increase their hold upon the society, they have reduced the temporal power of religions so that the latter serve to provide theological justification for the State:
"The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them....What capital does to labor, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason" (Proudhon, Les confessions d'un revolutionnaire, Paris: Garnier, 1851, p. 271).
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Sufic Notes on Proudhon, Rothbard, and Anarchism
Originally published on Attack the System, August 21, 2008
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| 1911 cartoon by American Socialists, although what the Marxists advocate only solidifies the same exact structure |
We must disavow ourselves from the false dialectic of Left and Right. We have transcended beyond that limited spectrum and have arrived at a Third Position, one which seeks a comprehensive solution outside the dominant framework. We should not remain conditioned to this evolutionist dialectic which views everything based upon an ill-defined spectrum of "right" and "left". Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi has written on this matter under his Scottish birth-name:
"The false dialectic of capital and communism, right and left, has for decades veiled from thinking people the possibility of grasping that what happened after 1945 was not only the collapse of the final phase of christian culture but the rise of a syncretic pseudo-culture, grafted onto the ruins of the old. A juden-kultur disguised as the previous model, but replacing it with a set of new values and expression whose unique driving force was the thrust of the market economy in its moments of expansion" (Ian Dallas, Oedipus and Dionysus, Freibourg Books, 1992).
True anarchism is the anarchism of the Syndicalists, Mutualists, Individualists, and other anti-Statist trends and not the Cultural Marxists who have hijacked the movement to promote "alternative lifestyles" and the Cult of Political Correctness. It is a harmless nuisance which the elite tolerates since it does nothing to disrupt their power-structures.
Economics the Enemy of Anarchists
Proudhon's maxim that "Anarchy is Order" brings to the surface a deep metaphysical reality latent until then. For he recognized that economics was a new religion and that economic ideas would become deified on an altar of ritualistic servitude. The masses are conditioned to believe that usury and taxation are two necessities of life (i.e., the old adage that nothing is certain except for death and taxes, and the fact that the Federal Reserve's manipulation of interest rates is accepted as a gospel truth by those in awe of the economists).
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| Umar Vadillo |
Umar Ibrahim Vadillo has pointed out that the deification of economics has an esoteric underpinning. The rise of the State cannot be divorced from the rise of the modern bank. The two have a symbiotic relation, as both derive from esoteric origins. The State serves to perpetuate Finance, and vice versa. To increase their hold upon the society, they have reduced the temporal power of religions so that the latter serve to provide theological justification for the State:
"The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them....What capital does to labor, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason" (Proudhon, Les confessions d'un revolutionnaire, Paris: Garnier, 1851, p. 271).
Nihilism and Violence for its own Sake
Proudhon shunned nihilism, warning in no uncertain terms about the need for political movements to adopt a political agenda. He was reluctant to support the revolutionaries of 1848 at first, due to their violence. He came to oppose the new revolutionary regime, since it sacrificed socio-economic reforms for political reform. History demonstrates that revolutions have always succeeded when they had a clear program outlined and failed when they worshipped violence. Proudhon understood this danger of political movements:
"He saw that their intellectual paralysis was the cause of helpless nihilist terrorism. Political idealism, once put in place, enforces an increasing separation between the outside world and the membership. In order to create a sense of progress among the membership, the critique of the outside world, seen as part of education, has to aggressively increase in magnitude week after week. This tendency, once adopted, leads inevitably to an absurd dualism consisting of an utterly demonised outside world and an undeserved assumption of pure goodness on their own part. This is what Carl Schmitt (d. 1985) defined as political theology. One side of this nihilistic philosophy produces helpless terrorism and suicidal strategies" (Vadillo, The Esoteric Deviation in Islam, CapeTown: Madinah Press, 2003, pp. 534-535).
Proudhon understood clearly that the socio-economic reforms were more pertinent than the political reform, as reforms at this realm would naturally lead to those at the political realm. In this regard, it is quite interesting that all those screaming for "change" in this country likewise talk merely in political terms, ignoring any consideration for monetary reform or changing the economic structures at a fundamental level. Rather, they all serve to perpetuate the State just like their alleged opposite.
Usury and Wage-Labor
Proudhon opposed anyone who earned their income from rent, interest, and wage labor. He recognized that the workers create a productive capacity greater than their individual sum, but they don't come to benefit from their own labor. Here the materialist device of "freedom" comes to play: Exercise your "freedom" to enter into a subservient work position or your "freedom" to not work, at which case the conditions of the society will ensure that you lose the basic human freedoms.
This is why successive opponents of the State have called for a return to the Guild-System, which they now understood was the only structure which could transform the society and eliminate the State. The workers of the Guilds were far more "free" (to use the modern rhetoric) than the workers in this age of "rights", where employment is the new framework of relations and wages become the only fruits of labor. This fact has been expressed by Vadillo:
"The slave is now called the employee. This employee belongs to a class of employees. Freedom, as understood by medieval guilds which upheld a social ethos in which the master/apprentice relationship dominated the degrading employer/employee relationship of today, was already superior to what was being aimed at under the banner of ‘rights’. But guilds became viewed as centres of resistance to the centralisation of the power of the state and therefore in their view an impediment to progress. The words liberté, égalité, fraternité meant very little more than the paper they were written on. In their name the guilds that dominated the Middle Ages were abolished giving way to the capitalist wage system. We have accepted the idea that employment is a decent goal for the unemployed, without confronting the fact that employment is the lowest form of economic activity: that is, a man reduced to mechanical functions, deprived of the capacity to fully enjoy the fruits of his work. This fact is today ignored, neither understood nor realised by the modern analysts within the new economic ethos. And yet this man, who is a slave by most standards of the past, is considered free because it says so in the constitution" (Vadillo, op. cit., pp. 142-143).
Private Property or Possession?
The "property" that was condemned by Proudhon was solely the type that was used and abused according to the whims of the one holding it, while true private ownership of land possesses it so as to maintain economic independence. He championed the rights of the small landowners against the State, for which he was criticized by Marx (who actually sought to increase the power of the State against the workers). Proudhon recognized "property is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the State" (Theory of Property).
Viewing the land broadly as a trust and holding to this anti-Statist view of property, could also be seen in the Guilds, which ensured a social network of welfare for the members and through which they could find their livelihood. We recognize that any elimination of the State means the evolution (excuse the word) of decentralized Guilds and communities as the new structure of our societies.
Rothbard as a Complement to Proudhon
The importance of private property as a protection of individual rights at the expense of the State was studied by Murray Rothbard. He was in many senses a complement to Proudhon, providing further intellectual framework for anarchism in a mass-industrialized society. I have serious issues with the concept of "anarcho"-capitalism in both theory and practice, however I appreciate some of Rothbard's contributions in libertarian (with a lower-case "l") thought.
Rothbard defined property as that which is acquired and transferred without any interference from the State. It should only be acquired through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud. He defined the self-ownership principle:
"The basic axiom of libertarian political theory holds that every man is a self-owner, having absolute jurisdiction over his own body. In effect, this means that no one else may justly invade, or aggress against, another's person. It follows then that each person justly owns whatever previously unowned resources he appropriates or 'mixes his labor with'. From these twin axioms - self ownership and 'homesteading' - stem the justification for the entire system of property rights titles in a free-market society. This system establishes the right of every man to his own person, the right of donation, of bequest (and, concomitantly, the right to receive the bequest or inheritance), and the right of contractual exchange of property titles" (Rothbard, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Cato Journal, Spring 1982, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 55-99).
This matter of property represents the fundamental difference between the modern Cultural Marxist, PC form of "anarchism" and the pure anti-Statism of the individualist anarchists. The former propose the abolition of private property, which would certainly increase the authority of the State and make people vulnerable to its inherent excesses. On the other hand, Anarchism by its very nature is voluntarist. In true nihilist fashion, the anarcho-communists advocated the abolition of money (see Rothbard, "The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists," The Libertarian Forum, January 1, 1970), but this is another matter entirely. What is the meaning behind anarchism?
"I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights" (Rothbard, Society and State).
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A Brief Tribute of Ezra Pound
Adapted from two posts I wrote on the now-defunct Marifah Forum, 10 June 2009. Then uploaded as a Facebook post: "Ezra Pound, Usury, and Tasawwuf". In the process, it reveals how much of an American metapolitical tradition there is we can draw inspiration from....
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| Ezra Pound |
"With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,
with usura" - Ezra Pound, CANTO XLV
"They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura." - Ezra Pound, CANTO XLV
"Metal is durable, but it does not reproduce itself. If you sow gold you will not be able to reap a harvest many times greater than the gold." - Ezra Pound, Gold and Work, 1944, p. 12.
"Most social evils are at root economic. I, personally, know of no social evil that cannot be cured, or very largely cured, economically." - Ezra Pound, "Essay: Murder By Capital," from Selected Prose, 1909-1965, New Directions, 1973, p. 229.
Ezra Pound was an outspoken opponent of this economic system which is based upon usury and a social system where the "art" of economics has been raised to the level of a religion, with the words of an elite called "economists" taken as written in stone. What he seems to highlight here is the need to re-evaluate our monetary structure, or rather the way economics is generally considered.
For example, in the U.S. successive governments and the corporate mainstream media seem to be in awe of whatever the Federal Reserve chairman says or does, as if he possesses some sort of higher wisdom that is not to be called into question. One can easily posit the question: how often is it exactly those who create the conditions, who then plead ignorance about the effects of these conditions - and are then believed to hold the solutions to the very same problems they created!
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| The wise sage in Venice, 1963 |
Pound belonged to a small but vocal element within the English-speaking world who criticized the usurocratic banking order; "right in the belly of the beast", given that the financial houses and global monetary order really received the utmost of their growth in America and Britain. Although the Federal Reserve is accepted as fact today, most Americans forget the earliest historical tradition against the central banks in this country. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Andrew Jackson were some of the most vocal opponents of banking.
In the literary field the tradition was passed on to the Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. While the power of the banking order was growing in ascendency, another vocal group called the Individualist Anarchists spoke out against it and their leading representative, Benjamin Tucker, condemned usury as one of the four monopolies on which the statist-capitalist system rests.
There was the advocates of the Silver Standard, led by William Jennings Bryan. As the Federal Reserve was solidifying its hold upon the monetary order, helped in this by a gradual effort to literally steal the people's gold, two other Americans took up the mantle: Thorstein Veblen and Ezra Pound. During his residence in Italy, the latter wrote:
"In the bosom of the usurocracy, William Morris, Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites and all the other useful and fertile groups of London and Paris formed a loose coalition to struggle for artistic autarchy. Although never clearly foreseeing that the arts could be fully incorporated in the body public, they fought against the usurocracy, against the hierarchy of filthy and fetid values in the mercantile century" (Meridiano di Roma, 2 June 1940; quoted in Pound, Idee fondamentali, ed. Caterina Ricciardi, Roma: Lucarini, 1991, p. 39).
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A Basic Introduction to the Four Monopolies
11 January 2011
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| Benjamin Tucker |
Usury is not merely an economic procedure, but a fundamental feature of its operation. There is perhaps no better way to describe modern economics than its result: a concentration of wealth into the hands of a few, who enjoy their privileges due to extensive state intervention in the market. Politics has been subverted by economic interests, such that it is not possible for politicians to operate except with the blessing of their financial backers and others who operate the economy.
One of the leading observers of this political economy was the American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker. He further developed the Mutualism of the French anarchist Joseph Proudhon, who had recognized the Economists were a new sect and Economics a modern religion, and combined it with the work of an early American anarchist thinker named Josiah Warren, to create a new form of Market Anarchism that was uniquely American. Examining the nature of the state and the development of its economic procedures, Tucker was able to identify four distinct monopolies that had developed.
The first is the land monopoly, "the enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation." (1) Capitalism is certainly unthinkable without two actions of the feudal classes: the abolition of the guild and replacing it with the corporation, and the enclosure of the commons. The latter was founded on artificial "property rights" of the landed aristocracy, so "the landed classes were given full legal title, and the peasants were transformed into tenants at will with no customary restriction on the rents that could be charged."(2)
In this historical sense, Proudhon made an important distinction between the idea of "property," certainly as it exists now has derived from an artificial basis, and "possessions," an organic view of land based on actual use and occupancy. This is the only just notion of land, one that is actually used and occupied through one's labor. Yet in the capitalist West there are large areas of land set aside for absentee owners, whether it is the government or big corporations.
Ironically, it has allowed for the land to be ecologically abused by these big corporations, which have polluted the land and air, even while the government has confiscated much land under the cover of "conservation." This keeps the resources artificially scarce and confers a monopolistic privilege on those who control the land.(3) In practice, this withholding land from production means "the state gives favored capitalists preferential access to it."(4) The land monopoly is the first to have occurred, as "economic exploitation is impracticable until expropriation from the land has taken place."(5)
Leading to such economic exploitation, this led to the second monopoly upon which all other monopolies rest, and this is the money monopoly. It is the privileged ability of some to issue and circulate the medium of exchange, denying the right of people to choose their own medium of exchange. Although initially vested within the government, this has been given to a cartel of private banks which then make up the central bank; laws are further passed making it a criminal offense for one to choose a medium of exchange other than the one issued by the central bank.
This monopoly more than anything else demonstrates how the state is really the merger of government and banking, just as the other monopolies demonstrate the further merger of the state with the corporation. In actuality, the bank doesn't loan anything since the financier "invests little or no capital of his own, and therefore, lends none to his customers, since the security which they furnish him constitutes the capital upon which he operates."(6) At the same time, the government intervenes with laws called capitalization requirements, that restrict this "service" to only those with enough available capital, so that the bankers are able to charge usurious prices on the loan.(7)
The money monopoly is central to understand, for it has reinforced the monopoly of land and capital. The key to ending this unnatural privilege called usury, is to give back to people the ability to choose their own medium of exchange. "I expect lending and borrowing to disappear, but not by any denial of the right to lend and borrow. On the contrary, I expect them to disappear by virtue of the affirmation and exercise of a right that is now denied, - namely, the right to use one's own credit, or to exchange it freely for another's, in such a way that one or the other of these credits may perform the function of a circulating medium, without the payment of any tax for the privilege."(8)
The third monopoly is that of tariffs, "fostering production at high prices and under unfavourable conditions by visiting with the penalty of taxation those who patronize production at low prices and under favourable conditions."(9) Tariffs are the result of the cartelization of labor. The late nineteenth century saw the rise of large corporations, which through the state privileges they enjoyed were able to have such an unfair advantage over smaller competitors that were more efficient.
The result has been "an economic system in which industry cartelizes behind the protection of tariff barriers; sells its output domestically for a monopoly price significantly higher than market-clearing level, in order to obtain super-profits at the consumer's expense; and disposes of its unsellable product abroad, by dumping it below cost if necessary."(10) It is nothing but the impetus behind more wars to guarantee corporate interests. Politically, this is the prerogative of both the neo-liberal Democratic Party and the neo-conservative Republican Party.
In practice, this is the reality behind the so-called "free trade" agreements that are anything but either "free" or "trade," relying on state-guaranteed privileges of select multinational corporations to exploit cheap labor abroad and then dump products on the domestic market, that could otherwise have been made cheaper and more efficiently. With the privilege they enjoy from these treaties not between the peoples from the bottom, but rather the capitalist-ridden governments at the top, these corporations are free to exploit labor by paying less, so that their own profits can rise.
The fourth monopoly is that of patents, which along with tariffs and transportation subsidies, developed monopoly capitalism as exists currently. "The patent privilege has been used on a massive scale to promote concentration of capital, erect entry barriers, and maintain a monopoly of advanced technology in the hands of western corporations."(11) To enforce these "intellectual property" laws, or the notion of "property rights" in ideas, naturally requires the invasion of the natural rights of those independent discoverers of an idea or an invention who made the discovery after the patentee.(12)
Like so-called "free trade" agreements, these patents have been enforced by the governments of the world, through global agreements such as GATT, to ensure more monopolies of the multinational corporations over what should be natural rights of health, medical care, and technology. It actually prevents a free market from operating to its full potential, because it suppresses innovation and imposes barriers on free competition. It is imperialistic, as for example it has prevented the natural right to health for people throughout the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, by allowing the multinational corporations to control the medicine and resources. Usury exists because the state stifles free competition.
This economic imperialism operates likewise through the usurious loans the International Monetary Fund (IMF) levies on the "third world" nations. Rather than attracting investors as part of the capitalist phantom of "development," it actually cripples those nations with an interest that far exceeds the amount borrowed. This is surely part of the emerging Global State, with an even greater concentration of wealth into the hands of a few yet extrapolated on a global scale. These internationalist institutions make important decisions behind closed doors, yet their policy decisions are implemented by governments. It is no longer about the "first world" nations lending to the "third world" nations. "The IMF is now in the position of dictating policy to the governments of debtor nations and not just in the third world."(13)
Impressive accomplishments have occurred in the so-called "third world" nations, even while poverty remains. The causes of this poverty is not through any inherent fault of the people themselves, but rather a collusion of the governments at the top with multinational corporations and Western banking interests. And this phantom of "aid" has merely led to proliferation of government corruption and compounds the economic problems of those nations, whether it is usurious loans or grants which nevertheless always have strings attached. "Aid is defined as the sum total of both concessional loans and grants. It is these billions that have hampered, stifled and retarded Africa's development."(14) Western liberal humanitarian do-gooders are inherently paternalistic, and they promote policies that can only be described as economic imperialism.
There has been a massive centralization of the power of the state, which historically occurred with the transformation of government by merging with banking, which created the modern state, as well as its transformation of the subject into a citizen. This process is also closely intertwined with usurious economics. It also created a new administrative apparatus based on budgets and regularity created by covering the deficits with paper-money. Indeed, the creation of money out of nothing has been crucial to the state's centralization of wealth.(15)
The problem of these monopolies is naturally founded upon the money monopoly, and it is opposing the money monopoly that must be our first consideration. As Proudhon noted, this monopoly has created a false scarcity of money, so that if other monopolies are addressed before tackling the rule of usury, it would only intensify this scarcity by leading to an excess of imports over exports. Likewise, without first ensuring the free trade in money at home - or the right to choose one's medium of exchange - it would force workers adrift to face starvation.(16) Usury is at the root of economic exploitation.
In conclusion, the centralization of wealth into a class hierarchy is due to state intervention in the market - which is the very antithesis of a free market - to protect the ruling class, through the following means: using a money monopoly of usury and the central banks controlling the right to issue and circulate the only allowable medium of exchange; granting patents and subsidies to favored corporations; imposing discriminatory taxation; and intervening militarily in order to gain access to international markets.(17)
NOTES:
(1) Benjamin Tucker, "State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree & Wherein They Differ," Liberty, March 10, 1888.
(2) Kevin Carson, "The Subsidy of History," The Freeman, Vol. 58, No. 5, June 2008.
(3) Murray Rothbard, Power and Market: Government and the Economy, Kansas City, MO: Sheed Andrews and Mcmeel, Inc., 1970, p. 68.
(4) Kevin Carson, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Fayetteville, AR: 2004, p. 205.
(5) Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, Delevan, WI: Hallberg Publishing Corp., 1983, p. 41n.
(6) Benjamin Tucker, "Economic Hodge-Podge," Liberty, October 8, 1887.
(7) Carson, op. cit., p. 220.
(8) Benjamin Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism And Other Essays, Colorado Springs, CO: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1972, p. 6.
(9) ibid., p. 19.
(10) Carson, op. cit., p. 230.
(11) ibid., p. 224.
(12) Rothbard, op. cit., p. 71.
(13) Ibrahim Lawson, "Economic Imperialism," in Banking: The root cause of the injustices of our time, eds. Abdalhalim Orr and Abdassamad Clarke, London: Diwan Press, 2009, p. 124.
(14) Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 9.
(15) Umar Vadillo, The Esoteric Deviation in Islam, Cape Town, South Africa: Madinah Press, 2003, pp. 164, 326.
(16) Tucker, "State Socialism and Anarchism," op. cit.
(17) Kevin Carson, "The Iron Fist Behind The Invisible Hand," <www.liberalia.com/htm/kc_iron_fist.htm>.
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An organic understanding of money
6 January 2011
Human beings are interconnected to their surrounding environment. From the very moment one human being produced something that the others wanted, some means of exchange was devised. In every culture the medium was something tangible that existed within nature, whether it was precious metals or tangible goods, such as grain. Money was always understood necessarily as being intrinsic in value; something that could be held with the hands or viewed with the eyes.
There was free access to these productive resources, so that labor became the activating factor. The amount of one's money was determined by the amount of labor they produced. Likewise, there was a sharing of the products of these labor according to need. This organic freedom that was instilled in the earliest human beings, is a natural yearning whose implications are becoming more evident to those who lack this essential freedom, which is free access to the market and the right to choose one's medium of exchange freely.
"The history of humanity has been largely one long and gradual discovery of the fact that the individual is the gainer by society exactly in proportion as society is free, and of the law that the condition of a permanent and harmonious society is the greatest amount of individual liberty compatible with equality of liberty." (1)
All transactions among these earliest societies were thus based on equality of opportunity and liberty to choose the medium of exchange. Hence, in every sense of the word it was a free market where everyone had equal access to the the market and its tangible resources, with only their hard work or labor determining the nature of its transactions.
History reveals that exploitation only arose in those societies where slavery was instituted. The labor of slaves created a surplus that supported a ruling class. This often created an unnatural disparity of wealth versus labor, so that labor no longer became the deciding factor of wealth, and there was a reverse trend: labor was shared by a greater number of people, while wealth became concentrated into the hands of an ever-decreasing number.
The earliest thinkers recognized that the nature of money was "barren," as the Greek philosopher Aristotle put it, because it produces nothing of its own. Rather, it cannot be separated from labor which is productive. No matter how much capital one may possess, it will be of no avail without labor to continuously activate it.
However, the reciprocal is very different. Without capital, the laborer would soon be able to produce all their needs by its production. And so our interconnectedness with nature is made even more clear here, for money cannot "mix" with the earth but can only be found from its precious metals, or the crops yielded, or even, in the form of the artificial notion that currently passes for money, the paper that comes from trees.
This is very different with labor, with tilling the soil and planting the crops, where sweat mixes with the earth. It follows then that using the same understanding, with no laborers to consume it capital will remain useless and rot back into the earth. It is through honest labor that wealth becomes activated, in so much as we are stewards of this earth; we depend on it for our livelihood and we should give back to it productively.
And it should be no coincidence that the basis of modern economics is exploitation of real things by artificial entities or concepts. So it is the exploitation of the earth's actual resources, by denying free access to all which would be justice and would ensure true balance, which is being done by artificial entities called the multinational corporations.
Likewise, the other component of this false structure are the financiers who cannot produce anything of their own but still they take from the tangible labor of others, and burden them with debt - and this is all guaranteed by another artificial entity, the State with its coercive powers, which perpetuates this because it is truly nothing but the merger of government with banking. The politicians are merely the outer wall shielding the real power of the financiers. Yet without the State creating these false hierarchies of wealth, the money masters' usury would surely crumble.
"Capital is essentially unproductive, and therefore rent and interest are robbery; rent and interest violate the law of fraternity, and cannot do otherwise; the natural increase of wealth tends to their diminution and ultimate disappearance, as is evident from history." (2)
(1) Benjamin Tucker, Instead of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1969, p. 24.
(2) Charles A. Dana, Proudhon & His "Bank of the People", New York: Benjamin R. Tucker Publisher, 1896, p. 34.
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Indigenous traditions around the world oppose usury
6 January 2011 (with some editing)
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| Another powerful insight from the late John Trudell |
It should be no surprise that usury was unknown throughout the world, as it came later and was not part of organic human nature. And in those places where it did become introduced, it was universally condemned. The current writer advises each person to research the culture and traditions of their ancestors, so they can better understand themselves and also truly "come to know each other" in mutual respect and understanding.
The current writer has done exactly this with his own ancestors, who include the Suevi-Alemanni, Belgae and Celtiberian tribes that inhabited what are now southwest Germany, Flanders, and Spain. Among both nations, usury was entirely unknown until it came with the Roman conquest. The Suevi-Alemanni were actually the first Germanic tribe with whom the Romans came into contact, so that they now referred to all the various tribes with the term 'Alemanni'. They were a people of oral traditions, rather than written records. Most of what is known about them comes from the Roman historian Tacitus, who writes:
"26. Lending money upon interest, and increasing it by usury, is unknown among them; and this ignorance more effectively prevents the practice than a prohibition would do." (1)
Even while the Romans might have had more "glories" than my ancestors when measured by modern standards, their harmonious living with nature and the inherent justice of their social transactions earned the admiration of this Roman historian and senator. Tacitus lamented how usury had become a reality in Rome, where it was "an ancient evil, and a perpetual source of sedition and discord." (2)
The Celtiberians were the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula at the time of the Romans. They were the descendants of the indigenous pre-Indo-European inhabitants of the Peninsula, who intermarried with the Celts who migrated there around the 6th century BC. Usury was likewise unknown to them and when they came in contact with people who had usury, they condemned it as one of the sixteen branches of avarice, since they recognized it as "taking more than what is due by selling the time." (3)
Economic exploitation has always come on the backs of a political domination. As the rule of Rome became entangled with that of its usurious economy, so too did it stamp out indigenous opposition to usury throughout Europe, and this became law with the rise of the central banks in the last few centuries. Such a false monopoly has been guaranteed with actions of the State, through the full weight of its laws which institutionalize usury and debt.
It is no accident that most of the leading financiers have come from Jewish backgrounds, a fact that is undeniable. It's an important example of how the creation of a false religious hierarchy (Pharisees) and their dogmas backed by political power, is so intricately connected to that of a false economic hierarchy. But usury is not endemic only to Jewish financiers, as we should also condemn the Gentile financiers who overturned their own traditional prohibition of usury with the rise of the Calvinist ethics and the modern State.
At the same time, usury was also unknown to indigenous peoples throughout the world, including nations throughout Africa, Australia(4), and Turtle Island, the continent known as "North America."(5) But the reality is that usury only came to the shores of those lands with the conquests of imperialist nations, where the rule of the financial elites often became the determining factor behind imperialist endeavors, particularly in Britain and France. And so it is that now the international monetary system that stifles traditional cultures around the world, has as its cornerstone the taking of interest on loans.
(1) Tacitus, A Treatise on the Situation, Manners and Inhabitants of Germania, Part 3.
(2) Tacitus, Annals, vi, 16.
(3) Oliver Davies and Thomas O'Loughlin, Celtic Spirituality, Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1999, pp. 434-435.
(4) Aboriginal activist Denis Walker opposes usury and fractional banking: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2DInuKclk4>.
(5) See my previous article, "The sovereign Lakota people declare their monetary freedom, institute silver-based currency," <https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2021/05/reflections-of-wasicu-on-pine-ridge-rez.html>.
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Capitalism is a religion
16 January 2011 (with some minor editing 3 June 2021)
Under finance capitalism, usury has allowed the financiers and economists to transform the very nature of money. Through interest it becomes artificially productive, whereas through fiat money it becomes artificially valuable. Interest and fiat money are closely linked as part of its cultic dimension of capital.
Through interest money becomes an end in itself, compromising the organic view of honest unexploited labor and free exchange of services as the only legitimate sources of income. It elevates money to a self-perpetuating power in itself rather than a mediating agent of power as has been traditionally understood. "The love of money is the root of all evil."(1)
Capitalism is not the free market, but rather its antithesis. For state intervention on behalf of the financial powers have given life to this false god of Mammon. Joseph Proudhon traced all current injustices to this root cause. "Credit is the canonization of money, the declaration of its royalty over all products whatsoever."(2) He then referred to "the sect of economists."(3)
The economists are the apologists of this religion, whose high priests are the financiers. The words of the financiers are made the gospel truth, whereas those of the economic apologists are odes to the glories of these high priests. The various factions of politicians are religious orders, each serving the dogma in their own way without accepting any other orthodoxy. The financiers reward the most subservient among them, with notable mention in their decrees which is favorable publicity through their mass media.
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| "The Conjurer" (1502) by the Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch. Such use of parlor tricks to profit can be seen in the Flemish proverb: "He who lets himself be fooled by conjuring tricks loses his money and becomes the laughing stock of children." An allegory for economists as modern sorcerers? |
Economic priests maintain their artificial privileges through obscuring their religion's true nature. Just as each clerical class derives power from keeping people ignorant of the faith and thus dependent upon them, so too have the economists buried its reality through a matrix of false principles and meaningless distinctions.
Tyranny starts with the abuse of language, as George Orwell informed us in his classic work on totalitarianism. Usury has been made synonymous with trade, so that a nation is not considered "prosperous" until it has a debt it can call its own. Hence, the materialistic myth of "progress" is measured in how much is borrowed from the financiers.
Usury and taxes are then held up as being necessary for such "prosperity," such that without them is only "backwardness." In practice, this has buttressed economic imperialism along with its accompanied cultural subversion, which "purifies", in an almost spiritual sense, all distinct cultural traditions and mores that may prevent spread of the creed. The West is held up as the supreme model for the world, but what this really proves is to what extent the West itself has been subverted to the rule of the financiers.
On its false altar of materialism, these high-priests of economics sacrifice the livelihood and real labor of the people, and have them serve their false god of Mammon through them - the rabbinical/priestly class of economists - as intermediaries. This new religion redefines Grace, so that through material "grace", it seeks to deliver spiritual hopelessness.
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| The new school of "Utilitarianism" justified the profits of a few usurers, by the sorcery that it allegedly benefited the good of the many, ignoring the deception and coercion inherent in usury. |
Capitalism seeks to address the same worries and anxieties as spirituality. It is "a pure religious cult" in which "utilitarianism gains its religious coloring."(4) It is no coincidence that a group of philosophers called the utilitarians provided much of the basis behind the acceptance of usury in the West, redefining it from an absolute evil to one that looked only to immediate "pragmatism", to be measured in material terms.
This is perhaps the first instance of a religion based solely on guilt rather than repentance. In other words, it seeks not to repent for this guilt but "to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt, in order to finally interest him in repentance."(5)
The growth of capitalism has only been possible because other religions transformed into capitalism. That is, they were reduced to mere private questions of "morals" without social obligations. "The economic issues have been carefully kept out of the religious discourse, so that the person who wants justice for the world finds no tools among what is left of religious morals. He needs to look elsewhere."(6)
The spiritual dimension of economics was a new esotericism, whereby religion was reduced to common grounds that could be acceptable to the majority; erasing religious identities so as to create a new identity based on "citizens" as taxpayers and clientele of the state. This predominant identity was then elevated to the realm of the unquestionable and became the orthodoxies of usury and taxation.(7) Under the name of "tolerance," the state does not tolerate anyone who refuses to pay taxes to the state or debt to the banks!
Capitalism is founded on a new trinity, an inversion of the previous sacral and its replacing by a new myth. The three primary forms of deriving income from other than honest labor, are interest, rent and profit. "These three constitute the trinity of usury, and are simply different methods of levying tribute for the use of capital."(8)
In fact, the state which is based on taxation, central banks and paper money, replaces it with its own morality, which includes those highlighted by Joseph Proudhon in "General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century":
"Thou shalt respect thy representatives and thy officials, which the hazard of the ballot or the good pleasure of the State shall have given you.
"Thou shalt obey the laws which they in their wisdom shall have made.
"Thou shalt pay thy taxes faithfully.
"And thou shalt love the Government, thy Lord and thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, because the Government knows better than thou what thou art, what thou art worth, what is good for thee, and because it has the power to chastise those who disobey its commandments, as well as to reward unto the fourth generation those who make themselves agreeable to it."
There is no actual "separation of church and state": this was merely a rhetorical tool by which a new religion called economics replaced the power of the other religions and penetrated into every aspect of society. Politics is a charade, a spectacle that is subverted by corporate wealth and operating under the watchful eyes of the financiers; indeed, all "elections" are merely exercises in who will lead the bankers' service industry called the state!
Under "privatization," it has subverted science and information, so that through the patents monopoly - upheld by the statist legal fiction of "intellectual property" laws - such basic needs as medicines have become corporate property, with its beneficiaries expected to pay tribute to financiers who allow it to them out of the kindness of their hearts, expecting only to be paid in debt! Likewise, under such "privatization" more land and resources can be gobbled up by financiers and the state, leading to the land monopoly that denies the basic understanding of stewardship of the earth and possessions as based solely on use and occupancy.
The real purpose of economics is to promulgate the new myth of the "invisible hand," accompanied by a dogmatic acceptance of usury, so that "if one seeks first the kingdom of Mammon, everything else (social compassion, individual freedom, universal wellbeing) will be given to you, as well as the by-products of the free market (the expression free-market itself being as unfaithful to reality as calling prostitution true love)."(9)
The old feudalist order justified itself as serving "the will of God" through the clerical class, whereas the succeeding mercantilist order replaced it with "the will of the people." This alleged "will" is merely an instrument of coercion: the state creates monopolies that would otherwise be punished (i.e. theft is redefined as "taxation," kidnapping as "conscription," etc.), but are considered legitimate as long as its done by the state. This provides the capitalist elites with endless legal justifications. In the succinct words of Benjamin Tucker: "interest is theft, rent robbery, and profit only another name for plunder."(10)
The cult of capitalism has permanence; it not merely rationalizes the sacred, but makes everyday a "feast day," or a celebration of this religion. It has become so connected with technology that if normal transactions do not occur for a day (or even the mere possibility they won't), the system collapses. This is what occurred with the stock market crash in 1929 and with the Y2K craze leading up to the year 2000.
Similarly, philanthropists can be more accurately understood as those who derive their wealth from crippling the people with debt, and then who "give back" to them on special feast days - with the same media they control holding them up as idols of adoration by the people! The banker George Soros cripples the economies of entire nations, and then gives a fraction of this stolen capital as "charity." In a most "esoteric" manner, crucial decisions facing entire nations are made behind closed doors by privileged elites through globalist bodies like Bilderberg, Club of Rome, and the Council on Foreign Relations, with no accountability or even publicity - and we're supposed to accept them as mere philanthropists!
Capitalism being the expansion of despair, and in such despair can also be found its salvation, manifests in notions such as "creative destruction" and bringing "order out of chaos." In true fashion of clerical hierarchies, this is filled with self-fulfilling prophecies meant to elevate the priestly class as the upholders of knowledge. The same individuals who back in the 1990s created the same policies that led to the collapse of the economy, such as Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, were then brought forward to propose the "solutions" to what was merely the bankers robbing the people!
The banks are temples in which people pay homage to Mammon. The analogy given earlier of a clerical hierarchy has a basis, as the ancient disdain towards usury was overturned by the Pharisees, who gave their temple over to the money-changing tables. "Jesus entered the temple precincts and drove out all those engaged there in buying and selling. He overturned the money changers' tables and the stalls of the dove-sellers, saying to them: 'Scripture has it, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you are turning it into a den of thieves.'"(11)
Modern finance derived much of its formative elements from aspects peculiar to these Pharisees, whose successors later included such banking families as the Rothschilds. "Judaism....Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes in name....the spirit of the ancient Pharisees survives, unaltered....From Palestine to Babylonia; from Babylonia to North Africa, Italy, Spain, France and Germany; from these to Poland, Russia, and eastern Europe generally, ancient Pharisaism has wandered....demonstrates the enduring importance which attaches to Pharisaism as a religious movement.”(12)
At the same time, modern finance capitalism wouldn't have been able to expand to the level it has historically if not for the rebellion of several Christian theologians against the traditional prohibition against usury. The new religion of capitalism made money a myth, "until it could draw from Christianity enough mythical elements in order to constitute its own myth."(13) In a very religious sense, capitalism was born from "the spirit that speaks from the ornamentation of banknotes."(14)
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| "Christ drives the Usurers out of the Temple", woodcut by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder |
The same process as the other Abrahamic religions occurred with the rise of a modernist school within Islam, seeking to overturn the explicit, uncategorical prohibition of riba by re-defining terms. This was their view of Islam as a system of principles and symbols - key to understanding the game of the bankers. The creation of these "principles" mean that neither the bankers nor their theologians will be principled except in a false utilitarian sense, as one "Islamic" banker revealed:
"We create the same type of products that we do for the conventional markets. We then phone up a Sharia scholar for a Fatwa. If he doesn't give it to us, we phone up another scholar, offer him a sum of money for his services and ask him for a Fatwa. We do this until we get Sharia compliance. Then we are free to distribute the product as Islamic."(15)
The problem has been identified as an outgrowth of the new philosophy of modernity, but the solution cannot be found in the very theism and philosophy that gave birth to the new religion. Rather, the only viable solution is to transcend such theisms and transcending all these illusionary foundations of modern anti-thought. Once this is achieved, then the way forward will appear to those with enough fortitude to seize the initiative.
"The whole problem of economics in general is the underlying presumption of collectivism. The individual's life and stored labor are viewed as the 'medium of exchange', the collective supply of 'society's' labor is to be found in the 'money supply' which must be manipulated by those in power on behalf of the collective in order to protect the all important bee hive that the economists call the 'economy'. These false assumptions have led to grave errors on an enormous scale. The question is not one of which school of economics is the most accurate, but rather, is the endeavor of economics valid? Is economics the new alchemy? This is a question of great importance."(16)
NOTES:
(1) The New Testament, Timothy 6:10.
(2) Joseph Proudhon, Proudhon's Solution of the Social Problem, New York: Vanguard Press, 1927, p. 53.
(3) ibid., p. 54.
(4) Walter Benjamin, "Fragment 74: Capitalism as Religion," in Eduardo Mendieta, ed., Religion as Critique: The Frankfurt School's Critique of Religion, New York: Routledge, 2005, p. 259.
(5) ibid.
(6) Umar Vadillo, The Esoteric Deviation in Islam, Cape Town: Madinah Press, 2003, p. 182.
(7) ibid., pp. 20-21.
(8) Benjamin Tucker, "State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree & Wherein They Differ," Liberty, March 10, 1888.
(9) Vadillo, op. cit., p. 7.
(10) Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty, eds. Michael Coughlin, Charles Hamilton and Mark Sullivan, 1975, p. 29.
(11) The New Testament, Matthew 21:12-13.
(12) Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, The Pharisees, The Sociological Background of Their Faith, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938, vol. 1, p. xxi.
(13) Benjamin, op. cit., p. 261.
(14) ibid.
(15) John Foster, "How Sharia-compliant is Islamic banking?," BBC, December 11, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8401421.stm.
(16) Hugh A. Thomas, Stored Labor: A New Theory of Money, 1991, pp. 80-81.
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Addendum
Aside from the above articles, I wrote a biographical profile of the Swedish anarchist, mystic and artist Ivan Aguéli in 2014....More recently, after attending and speaking at the First International National-Anarchist Conference in June 2017, I wrote an article entitled "Anarchism Without Adjectives: National-Anarchism and the Diversity of Communities" for Tribes Magazine. So it is that I look back at my past writings towards the future.
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