I’m too busy to blog right now about where I agree and where I disagree, but check out Sean Gabb’s review of Kevin Carson’s Organization Theory.
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20 Comments
This was a great read, and so were many of the comments. The implications of left-libertarian economic thought are enormous and exciting. It’s simply tragic that we are considered the weird minority in a group that is already a weird minority. I’m confident that the situation will improve.
Yeah, maybe we’ll become the majority in a weird minority!
An ambitious plan!
A very comprehensive review! I’d ask somebody to put Kevin’s book on pdf file, but the guy deserves some cash. I must buy one sometime.
Well, each chapter is already available as a pdf file.
I think those who can afford it should buy the book. I know from personal experience how nice it feels to write a book and then take in some cash from those who appreciate it.
Are you still grumpy, Sean, that the copy of yo… um Richard Blake’s first novel I bought from Amazon was a second hand one for 5p!
Thanks for including my point about soviet communism in the discussion. I suspect you may be correct that some anarchists were excited about it at the beginning: After all, many people were. All sorts of liberals and others in the UK and US went over to see it for themselves, just as they were excited about fascism and Nazism a decade or so later.
See Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman for examples of two anarchists who went to Soviet Russia optimistic and came back the reverse.
I guess once could add Rose Wilder Lane to that list, although she didn’t become an anarchist until later.
Don’t forget George Orwell’s experience in Catalonia.
Or Bertrand Russell’s in Russia. (Russell and his future wife Dora both went to Russia at the same time — though not on the same itinerary — and both arrived optimistic, but Russell left disillusioned while Dora remained optimistic.)
I mentioned Goldman and Berkman in my comment on the Libertarian Alliance yahoo group, which Sean reproduced on the LA blog. Victor Serge is the only name that springs to mind of an anarchist who went to Russia to see how things were going and liked it.
Richard,
Well, part of the reason that so many native Russian and Ukrainian anarchists were excited about the October Revolution is that they had participated in making it, and figured that the Revolution was a big step towards the realization of power in their lifetimes. In 1917, the issue was not so much that they trusted or were excited about the Bolsheviks or Party communism, but rather because the Bolsheviks were only one of many different factions involved in the October Revolution, and often not the most important. Their enthusiasm about the whole project started dropping off in mid-1918-1921, as the state socialists started seriously putting together their workers’ state, the Bolsheviks started moving to consolidate power within it (with the Civil War serving as the health of their state), and the Bolsheviks formed up the Cheka and the Red Army and put them to work imprisoning and shooting anarchists. Most of the exiles from out of the country started arriving toward the end of that period (e.g. Goldman, Berkman, and most of the other exiles from the Palmer raids arrived in January 1920).
I agree. I suppose part of the question is, “you say left libertarians were enthusiatic about about the Bolshevik revolution? OK, which part?” They may have been exceited by the prospects of a socialist revolution when it first broke out, but it seems that it was a short lived excitement, as the true nature of the “revolution” swiftly became apparent. Kropotkin was excited about it at first, and later died under house arrest!
The cover is pretty cool, too
One nice thing about the cover is that judging simply by the title and perhaps a random glance at a page or two a casual reader might make the mistake of thinking this is going to be a stuffy read and lay it aside. But the cover conveys a better sense of the attitude to expect.
You derive pleasure from consenting capitalist acts between adults? Insanity!
Thanks, Roderick.
Nick: MPE’s available as a pdf at The Pirate Bay (it was a volunteer effort by someone else with my blessing). Someday soon I’ll send an attachment of the OT pdf to the guy who did it.
Specifically here:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4952509/Studies_in_Mutualist_Political_Economy_by_Kevin_A._Carson
Thanks for the info! Kevin. I do wish to see you compensated for your work, so I might buy a hard copy sometime.