The history of nation states is written around the dates of war, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar.
#KarlHess
#Anarchism
#Anarchist
#Anarchy
Karl Hess
![Hess compared the attitudes of both conservatives and liberals in America on the subjects of work and welfare, and found them similarly focused on control and disempowerment.
Conservatives often say that they want welfare recipients to work. But what they want is merely menial service, people willing to be the servants of the well-to-do. They do not want work to mean the sort of independence that will be discussed throughout this book: the work of self-managing people. Liberals, on the other hand, don’t want welfare recipients to work. They want them to be clients of their liberal programs, programs which depend upon retaining a constituency of dependent poor rather than upon encouraging independent and therefore quite probably anti-liberal, self-managing workers.[45]
In place of managerial authoritarianism, he called for a “new age of fully participatory social organization, of control of production by those who produce, of mutual aid…, of privilege ended and responsibility begun…,](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kmtf44pbl7trswg7so23weg3/bafkreifjmuo3io3l3yvcxbt6p7aiiubcfcu6f47aw2myxmhr62l3wtyubm)
Hess compared the attitudes of both conservatives and liberals in America on the subjects of work and welfare, and found them similarly focused on control and disempowerment. Conservatives often say that they want welfare recipients to work. But what they want is merely menial service, people willing to be the servants of the well-to-do. They do not want work to mean the sort of independence that will be discussed throughout this book: the work of self-managing people. Liberals, on the other hand, don’t want welfare recipients to work. They want them to be clients of their liberal programs, programs which depend upon retaining a constituency of dependent poor rather than upon encouraging independent and therefore quite probably anti-liberal, self-managing workers.[45] In place of managerial authoritarianism, he called for a “new age of fully participatory social organization, of control of production by those who produce, of mutual aid…, of privilege ended and responsibility begun…,
![Hess also echoed a principle, variously known as the second watershed or counterproductivity, formulated by Ivan Illich.[49]
The cities are falling apart. Nothing works in them. Crime goes up and so does the police budget. The police can’t protect. Transportation declines and the highway budget goes up. The roads can’t deliver, they can only congest. Kids seem to get dumber but the school budgets stay high. Schools can’t educate — at best they candidly try to pacify.[50]
Hess took another position anathema to mainstream right-libertarianism, in acknowledging the existence not only of political power but of “concentrated economic power — power that is concentrated in close collusion with state power at every step of the way.” The failure to confront economic power was “a contradiction that absolutely haunts the entire conservative position”[51] — and by implication also the libertarian right.
In the political theory of the life I had led, the abilities of people to control their own](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kmtf44pbl7trswg7so23weg3/bafkreih6z3f4dwjrsqfhh2jzft2e56f53cxa5gxotcd7gqxw4hqdea4bcq)
Hess also echoed a principle, variously known as the second watershed or counterproductivity, formulated by Ivan Illich.[49] The cities are falling apart. Nothing works in them. Crime goes up and so does the police budget. The police can’t protect. Transportation declines and the highway budget goes up. The roads can’t deliver, they can only congest. Kids seem to get dumber but the school budgets stay high. Schools can’t educate — at best they candidly try to pacify.[50] Hess took another position anathema to mainstream right-libertarianism, in acknowledging the existence not only of political power but of “concentrated economic power — power that is concentrated in close collusion with state power at every step of the way.” The failure to confront economic power was “a contradiction that absolutely haunts the entire conservative position”[51] — and by implication also the libertarian right. In the political theory of the life I had led, the abilities of people to control their own
. @kevincarson1.bsky.social on the particular leftism of market-anarchist #KarlHess, and his overlaps with thinkers like Cory Doctorow, Ivan Illich, and others.
c4ss.org/content/59407
#anarchism #libertarianleft #decentralism #decentralization #anticapitalism
