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Mutual Exchange Radio


The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS.org) is an anarchist think-tank and media center. Its mission is to explain and defend the idea of vibrant social cooperation without aggression, oppression, or centralized authority.

In particular, it seeks to enlarge public understanding and transform public perceptions of anarchism, while reshaping academic and movement debate, through the production and distribution of market anarchist media content, both scholarly and popular.

It is also the home of Mutual Exchange Radio, a new podcast on anarchist thought, hosted by Zachary Woodman. The show brings together a wide variety of guests, from academics, to on-the-ground activists, to Center scholars, to entrepreneurs to discuss the latest developments in the philosophy and practice of market anarchism.

Feb 27, 2019

Welcome to Mutual Exchange Radio, a project of the Center for a Stateless Society. Today’s guest is Kevin Carson, a senior fellow of the Center for a Stateless Society who holds the Center's Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory. He has written books such as Studies in Mutualist Political EconomyOrganization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available on C4SS’ website. Carson has also written for such print publications as The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty and a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation, and his own Mutualist Blog.

Today, we discussed a study he published last year for the Center on New Libertarian Municipalism. Libertarian Municipalism is an idea that has its roots in one of the most famous social anarchist thinkers of the twentieth century, Murray Bookchin. However, Kevin is more interested in modern movements focusing on a more decentralized model of a market economy based on common ownership of certain resources, drawing from thinkers such as Elinor Ostrom. Its focus is on an openly democratically run city on a local level, transforming local governments into partners in the transition to a post-capitalist economy. In this discussion, we cover the history of the idea of libertarian municipalism, what the movement on the ground has looked like in recent years, the policy implications of it for local cities, economic indicators that society is progressing in that direction, and common objections to the idea. It was a fun conversation that allows leftist thinking to move on from focus on, from the center, electoral political outcomes on the national level and, from more radical circles, violent insurrections that are impractical in the near future.