Organization Theory: A Libertarian PerspectiveKevin Carson (2008)
This book applies the economic principles of individualist anarchism, as developed in
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, to the study of the large organization. It integrates the insights of mainstream organization theory into that framework, along with those of more radical thinkers like Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman, and R.A. Wilson. Part One examines the ways in which state intervention in the market, including subsidies to the inefficiency costs of large size and regulatory protection against the competitive consequences of inefficiency,
skews the size of the predominant business artificially upward to an extent that simply could not prevail in a free market. Part Two examines the effects of such large organizational size on the character of the system as a whole. Part Three examines the internal pathologies and contradictions of organizations larger than a free market could support. And Part Four surveys the potential building blocks of an alternative, decentralized and libertarian economic order.
As long as free-market advocates continue to embrace a theory of the firm that is contradicted by the daily experience of millions of ordinary people, they will continue to be regarded as apologists for big business – and deservedly so. Carson does a brilliant job of showing how the swollen, hierarchical, exploitative firms that dominate our economy are the product not of the free market but of systematic government intervention on behalf of the corporate elite. Carson’s work offers a compelling alternative to both the right-wing package deal (embrace predatory capitalism in order to get the benefits of free markets) and the left-wing package deal (reject free markets in order to avoid the evils of predatory capitalism), and lays out an inspiring blueprint for workers and consumers to take back power from the bureaucrats and plutocrats.
– Roderick T. Long, professor of philosophy, Auburn University
Kevin Carson’s book touches many of the key subjects regarding the transformation of our political economy into a post-capitalist, ‘peer to peer’ logic, examining not just the organisational logic of productive organizations, but also the transformation in the nature of machinery and capital goods (which are becoming more and more distributed and miniaturized) and the new culture of cooperation that is taking root in open design communities. I don’t think there is an equivalent book that look so seriously and deeply into the real potential of social and economic transformation, anchored in a detailed study of contemporary productive capacities.
– Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation
Carson brings so-called ‘economies of scale’ down from the clouds so that we can compare them with different economies of different scales we might otherwise have enjoyed of states and corporations had not so helpfully inflicted a particular pattern of artificial bigness on us for nearly 200 years. He analyzes in great detail the top-down bossism of large-scale organizations. Conversant with a wide range of literature on management questions, he applies the Austrian theorem on economic calculation to a critique of corporate capitalism – an area where Austrians fear to tread. At the same time, Carson sketches out an alternate set of arrangements – without large-scale accumulations of political-economic power. All who have followed this book’s emergence will be very happy to see it in its final form; not least because of the work’s systematic and synoptic vision, which brings empirical reality into focus in reltion with the relevant theory.
– Joseph Stromberg, Independent Institute
Kevin Carson’s new book offers another remarkable contribution to the theory of the freed market, and his defense of cottage industry and cooperative organization strikes a powerful blow against the ideological underpinnings of Progressive managerialism and state capitalism – an ideology shared by the statist Left and Right, and by all too many libertarian apologists for actually-existing capitalism. In the individualist tradition we have written a great deal about the need for consensual and respectful free association, but not nearly enough about just what our organizations, networks, and cooperative projects might look like in a world free from the coercion of the State; Carson argues exhaustively and persuasively for a vision of a cooperative, localized, green and durable economy – a vision which calls libertarians back to our historical roots in the radical (anarchistic Left), while prodding us forward to a new and fuller understanding of the full social and economic implications of radical freed-market ideas.
– Charles Johnson, Molinari Institute
Kevin A. Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and a prolific writer on subjects including free-market anti-cap*it*al*ism, the in*div*idualist anarchist tradition, grassroots technology and radical unionism. He is the author of
”The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand”,
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective and
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution. He keeps a blog at
mutualist.blogspot.com and frequently publishes short columns and longer research reports for the
Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).
Connect With Us