On Facebook, Doug Henwood — author of Wall Street and editor of the Left Business Observer — recently pointed to the U.S. Arpa-E agency’s development of an advanced storage battery as an example of the “public sector” outperforming the “private sector” (March 3 at 10:48AM). “While VC is funding the world’s first stabilized action camera,”…
It’s generally conceived that the entrepreneur is the lone economic wolf in the economy, bringing together the morass of labour, capital and resources and placing it under his/her will. This picture of rugged individualism usually serves little purpose other than to justify large expansions of wealth by corporate CEOs and ignores the actual picture of…
In a recent open letter to the mayor (Julia Carrie Wong, “San Francisco tech worker: ‘I don’t want to see homeless riff-raff,’“ The Guardian, Feb. 17), entitled tech bro Justin Keller whined that the sight of homeless people ruins his enjoyment of the local atmosphere in San Francisco. And when his family comes to visit,…
Techno-Utopianism, Counterfeit and Real (With Special Regard to Paul Mason’s Post-Capitalism) Download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: Center for a Stateless Society Paper No. 20 (Spring 2016) I. Capitalist Techno-Utopianism from Daniel Bell On II. Categories of Leftist Techno-Utopianism III. Other Non-Capitalist Techno-Utopianisms John Holloway Michel Bauwens Accelerationism IV. Analysis: Comparison of the…
Despite everything the academic power structure and its allies in the U.S. Justice Department could do to Aaron Swartz — including driving him to suicide — the enemies of information freedom in academia have been in steady retreat ever since. Back in 2011, in his Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, Swartz defined his revolutionary goal as…
The so-called “sharing economy” is sometimes also called the “gig economy” — arguably a more accurate term, because “sharing economy” carries overtones of cooperation and mutuality that are (to say the least) grossly misleading. In the case of ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft it’s misleading because it suggests the direct sharing of rides between…
In a recent commentary (“Economic Inequality,” January 2016), venture capitalist Paul Graham defends inequality on the grounds that it’s not necessarily the result of a zero-sum game. In fact, he says, it’s usually not. He accuses “the most naive” critics of growing levels of economic inequality of starting out from “the pie fallacy: that the…
Download: The Decline and Fall of Sloanism [PDF] or the ready for print zine. Introduction I. Babylon is Fallen Resumption of the Crisis of Overaccumulation Resource crises (Peak Oil) Fiscal Crisis of the State Decay of the Cultural Pseudomorph (Failed) Attempts to Counteract the Crisis of Value with Enclosure of the Digital Commons II. Relocalized…
If you believed the talking heads, you might think concern with inequality in our society was just a product of envy and economic ignorance. That’s another reason not to believe the talking heads. The fact that someone has more wealth than I do doesn’t injure me or make me worse off. And the economy isn’t…
As used by right-wing apologists for “free market capitalism” (an oxymoron if ever there was one), capitalism is the source of everything good in the world — but also something that never existed. And it switches repeatedly back and forth from one to the other, every couple of sentences, in the same argument. I learned…
Paul Mason. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane, 2015). Based on Mason’s preview of Postcapitalism in his article at The Guardian, I was predisposed to like it. And having read the book itself, I can’t say I’ve changed my mind much. Mason occupies a niche where there is plenty of room for more…
C4SS Feed 44 presents Charles Johnson‘s contribution to Part 8 of Markets Not Capitalism: “The Clean Water Act versus Clean Water,” read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The levels of invasiveness required by “intellectual property,” in the digital age, cannot be exaggerated. The intrusive DRM embedded in proprietary media, and the draconian…
In an article at Alternet a while back Richard Eskow (“Rise of the techno-Libertarians,” April 12, 2015) made some excellent criticisms of the capitalist model of “techno-libertarianism” centered on Silicon Valley. Most of his points relate in some way to the profit-driven business model of the tech industry, which treats products primarily as a source…
Seemingly John Stossel never sits down to write without the goal of further lowering the bar for qualifying as a libertarian. This time (“My Trump Problem,” Reason, Nov. 11), he’s managed to push the criterion to the all-time low of being somewhat less statist than Donald Trump. Stossel’s first problem with Trump allegedly centers on…
In a preview article at The Guardian last July for his new book Post-Capitalism (“The end of capitalism has begun,” July 17), Paul Mason — following a path previously trodden by John Holloway and by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt — argued that the emergence of a successor system to capitalism would resemble not so…
Questo articolo è stato pubblicato originariamente su The Freeman il 24 agosto 2011 con lo stesso titolo. Il movimento progressista sorto a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento, dottrina da cui nasce la moderna sinistra americana, viene talvolta visto erroneamente come una filosofia “anti-aziendale”. Certo era contro il mercato, ma questo non significa che fosse necessariamente…
Land Allocation Rules are Necessary Kevin Carson’s Rejoinder to William Gillis As an alternative to what Will regards as the typical approach in advocating for a set of property rules — basically a sales pitch promoting the features of one compared to all the others — he proposes “one where we don’t exclusively compare prefigurative…
Introduction The capitalist economy has gone through another shock, and the potential for another, larger one is on the horizon. While it’s seemingly in its death throes, capitalism continues to fuel growth. Under such a system we have seen a vast improvement in general living standards across the globe, despite rigged markets and the omnipresent…
The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey, by Michael Huemer (Palgrave McMillan – 2012) Whether anarchy is good or not isn’t important. It’s whether it’s comparatively better than the alternatives. Or at least that’s what Michael Huemer begins arguing in chapter eight of The Problem…
How Rothbardians Occupy Part of the Occupancy-and-Use Spectrum Jason Byas’s Response to Kevin Carson Are We All Mutualists Now? Maybe: Lockeanism as Occupancy & Use The first thing to say in response to Kevin Carson’s opening essay is that he’s largely right. As this exchange’s representative Rothbardian, I agree with his suggestion that the differences…
