C4SS would like to extend a warm welcome to our newest author, Bent Delbeke! Their first piece is The Concentration of Capital, and expounds on some of the possibilities and benefits of non-capitalist markets.

As part of our vetting process, we ask several questions in an attempt to understand where an author stands on certain key issues. Below are Bent’s responses to a couple of those questions:

National anarchism, for me, is an oxymoron. My view on the matter is that hierarchies are necessary if one wants to limit who gets into a community, and so a world with borders, even if they are heavily localised, is inherently in conflict with anarchist and libertarian-socialist ideals. We must base our communities on affinity and affinity alone. If one wants to do the work a community demands of its members, then one should be able to join this community, and so there is no place for reactionary politics regulating who gets to join a community based on ethnicity. Any form of nationalism is contradictory to anarchism as the nation is a societal construct that has to be held up by force, and so requires violence and hierarchies.

I am quite supportive of LGBT+ issues. I think both capitalism and statism have oppressed people with different sexualities and different gender identities, and ignorance is still rampant in our society when it comes to these issues, and certainly trans issues. From an anarchist perspective, I would argue that the greatest argument against homophobia and transphobia (and all other forms of bigotry) is the argument of the individual as being only subject to himself. One should be able to do anything one pleases with oneself, and any other consenting adult, it is no matter of the state, nor of “society.” And I think we should be defending LGBT+ and especially trans people against attacks on their identity and autonomy.