“Contract Feudalism”: A Response to Paul Marks was originally published in the 2008 issue of Economic Notes No. 105 by the Libertarian Alliance, written by Kevin Carson.
This calculation argument can be applied not only to a state-planned economy, but also to the internal planning of the large corporation.
Proudhon, by piling up his contradictions this way, was not merely being French.
Inequality is a scourge that is not going to go away.
THE STATE: That institution which interferes with the Free Market through the direct exercise of coercion or the granting of privileges (backed by coercion).
Building a road is a manifestation of power, particularly state power.
Using the “socialist” label provides the occasion for a clear distinction between the genus “socialism” and the species “state-socialism.”
State socialism has attempted to realize socialism through the power of the state. Not surprisingly, given everything we know about states, state socialism has proven in most respects to be a disaster.
Gary Chartier: An authentically leftist position, I suggest, is marked by opposition to subordination,exclusion, and deprivation.
Carson: The human infrastructure of traditional reporting is a magnificent army. But as Lincoln said to McClellan, “if you’re not planning to do anything with that army, may I borrow it?”
Left libertarianism is authentically leftist because it seeks to challenge privilege, hierarchy, exclusion, deprivation, and domination–both ideologically and practically.
Roderick T. Long: The Case for Libertarian Anarchism
Carson: Rather than negotiating on the bosses’ terms under the Wagner rules, we should be using network resistance and asymmetric warfare techniques to make the bosses beg us for a contract.
Kevin Carson: By any reasonable standard of justice, the plantations should have been broken up after the Civil War and the land given to the freed slaves.
Claire Wolfe: It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation.
Charles Johnson: The one thing that the government and its managerial aid workers will never do is just get out of the way.
The issues that I care about require a long-term battle and they’re ones I’m very devoted to pursuing.
Suzanne La Follette: Political government offers privilege every facility for circumventing the popular will whenever it becomes inimical to the interests of privilege, as it is the business of political government to do.
Away with the parent of monopoly — government — and all other monopolies will vanish like fog before the morning sun.
Carson: The average member of the producing classes should rest secure in the knowledge that he would be able to support himself in the future, without depending on the whims of an employer.
