Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions on the environment.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe.

Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left. He was one of the founders of what is now called 'sociobiology' or 'evolutionary psychology' with his book Mutual Aid, arguing that human nature had evolved in ways conducive to the communitarian anarchism that he espoused.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important places.

Democracy has both expanded and declined over the years.

I grew up in that, when I was a kid. My friends and I used to play cowboys and Indians. We were cowboys killing the Indians, following the Wild West stories. All of this combined into a very strange culture, which is frightened.

We should therefore be opposed to institutional barriers to that freedom: Military dictatorships, for example. Or states run by a Central Committee.