New Article in CounterPunch

Discussing Ambiguities in Economic Concepts

What do we mean when we deploy ideas like competitive markets and private property? Can we reconstitute these ideas in a way that helps us move out of plutocratic, authoritarian social orders into those that nurture people and communities? In a new article for CounterPunch, I discuss these ideas and critical interventions from anarchists and Marxian theorists of monopoly capital:

In his introduction to István Mészáros’ Beyond Leviathan: Critique of the State, John Bellamy Foster discusses the idea that it is “impossible to go ‘beyond capital’  … without also going beyond the state.” In this view, the observed ascendency of capital is both a political and economic phenomenon, in which the state privileges capital and shifts costs and crises onto those who are not socially positioned to protect themselves. The state has played a decisive role in creating the conditions necessary for such an economic system. Often it is in our interactions with the power of capital that we confront the power of the state in our own lives.

Read the rest here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/27/the-ambiguity-of-competition/