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Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
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.
656 pages, Paperback
First published December 20, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 8, 2021
A long and challenging (for me, and in a good way) read, and probably the one I've highlighted the most passages in order to go back to, especially when confronted with either doubts myself, or with arguments from right-libertarians.
Building on the work established in "Studies In Mutualist Political Economy", Carson now takes aim at America's Most Persecuted Minority: Big Business - that most beloved "natural outcome" of the Invisible Hand.
The attack is two-fold:
Firstly, that it is anything *but* natural. There is a natural limit on the size of any endeavour, and that limit is the point whereupon it becomes more costly to bring things "in-house" vs contracting out (eg. in terms of HR departments, as just one example of many, to manage the extra staff/departments), but large corporations regularly breach that limit - because "the state selects for hierarchy". Left alone, most endeavours would *naturally* be much smaller, as the costs would be internalised; with state intervention, those costs are externalised onto the community at large, thus allowing for - and indeed encouraging - large and unwieldy businesses, where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
This is the bit that I found most interesting, as a lot of it was, if not necessarily new to me, articulated in a better fashion, and backed up by citation after citation.
Secondly, that such businesses are *inherently inefficient*. Now, whilst I said that the first bit was more interesting, this bit was only less so because I've worked for large household names my entire life, and so I've long suspected the inefficiency. I very much *enjoyed* this section, chuckling away to myself at the mention of Fish! Philosophy having literally gone through the training (and all the others) back in the day.
Being UK based, it was very interesting to see the US versions, which confirmed long held, and maybe buried suspicions I'd held in the past, back before I might have openly questioned such things. There are some interesting references to the houses and communities built after WWII in Pitsea and Laingdon, the prefabs and community built houses, which I noted because that's literally where my father grew up, and the narrative matches what I learned at his knee.
Where this book gets *really* interesting is in Carson's tentative steps towards a way out - which his follow-up books explore more thoroughly, his beginning steps towards exploring subsistence farming (lightly touched upon in his previous work), home workshops, and more importantly *community* workshops and networking, and his mulling over the natural limit of collective endeavours and how they can be applied in the real world.
It's easy for me to say, because I came to his work late, am reasonably familiar with his current thinking, and am working both backwards and forwards through it, but it feels like here is where he started to put notes to one side with a "I'm coming back to this later", but this is the building block (to my mind) on which the rest is based.
Five stars, and probably the book to read before the others.
Building on the work established in "Studies In Mutualist Political Economy", Carson now takes aim at America's Most Persecuted Minority: Big Business - that most beloved "natural outcome" of the Invisible Hand.
The attack is two-fold:
Firstly, that it is anything *but* natural. There is a natural limit on the size of any endeavour, and that limit is the point whereupon it becomes more costly to bring things "in-house" vs contracting out (eg. in terms of HR departments, as just one example of many, to manage the extra staff/departments), but large corporations regularly breach that limit - because "the state selects for hierarchy". Left alone, most endeavours would *naturally* be much smaller, as the costs would be internalised; with state intervention, those costs are externalised onto the community at large, thus allowing for - and indeed encouraging - large and unwieldy businesses, where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
This is the bit that I found most interesting, as a lot of it was, if not necessarily new to me, articulated in a better fashion, and backed up by citation after citation.
Secondly, that such businesses are *inherently inefficient*. Now, whilst I said that the first bit was more interesting, this bit was only less so because I've worked for large household names my entire life, and so I've long suspected the inefficiency. I very much *enjoyed* this section, chuckling away to myself at the mention of Fish! Philosophy having literally gone through the training (and all the others) back in the day.
Being UK based, it was very interesting to see the US versions, which confirmed long held, and maybe buried suspicions I'd held in the past, back before I might have openly questioned such things. There are some interesting references to the houses and communities built after WWII in Pitsea and Laingdon, the prefabs and community built houses, which I noted because that's literally where my father grew up, and the narrative matches what I learned at his knee.
Where this book gets *really* interesting is in Carson's tentative steps towards a way out - which his follow-up books explore more thoroughly, his beginning steps towards exploring subsistence farming (lightly touched upon in his previous work), home workshops, and more importantly *community* workshops and networking, and his mulling over the natural limit of collective endeavours and how they can be applied in the real world.
It's easy for me to say, because I came to his work late, am reasonably familiar with his current thinking, and am working both backwards and forwards through it, but it feels like here is where he started to put notes to one side with a "I'm coming back to this later", but this is the building block (to my mind) on which the rest is based.
Five stars, and probably the book to read before the others.
June 4, 2020
This book does a thorough assessment to alternatives to existing state capitalism and the benefits of cooperative decentralized market socialism. However in many respects it is too thorough and the book itself is a dense beast. A lot of it is also derivative of Carson’s other book on mutualism.
February 6, 2019
Essential reading for people currently alive; explains much about the world we live in (and the hollowness of it) and gives hope about the better society growing in the cracks and shadows.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews