Kevin Amos Carson (born 1963) is an American
author, anarchist and political theorist on
the topics of mutualism, individualist anarchism,
left-libertarianism and freemarketism.
He graduated from the University of Arkansas
in 1987.
== Research career ==
In November 2008, Carson became a research
associate at the Center for a Stateless Society
as the center's first paid staff member.
Additionally, he holds the center's Karl Hess
Chair in Social Theory.Since January 2009,
Carson has produced several studies and commentaries
for the center.
== Ideas ==
=== 
Free markets vs. capitalism ===
Unlike some other market anarchists, Carson
defines capitalism in historical terms, emphasizing
the history of state intervention in market
economies: "It is state intervention that
distinguishes capitalism from the free market".Carson
does not define capitalism in the idealized
sense, but says that when he talks about "capitalism"
he is referring to what he calls "actually
existing capitalism."
He believes that "laissez-faire capitalism,
historically speaking, is an oxymoron", but
has no quarrel with anarcho-capitalists who
use the term and distinguish it from "actually
existing capitalism".
In response to claims that he misuses the
term "capitalism," Carson has said he deliberately
resurrected what he has claimed to be an old
definition of the term in order to "make a
point".
He has claimed that "the term 'capitalism,'
as it was originally used, did not refer to
a free market, but to a type of statist class
system in which capitalists controlled the
state and the state intervened in the market
on their behalf".
Carson holds that "[c]apitalism, arising as
a new class society directly from the old
class society of the Middle Ages, was founded
on an act of robbery as massive as the earlier
feudal conquest of the land.
It has been sustained to the present by continual
state intervention to protect its system of
privilege without which its survival is unimaginable".
Carson argues that in a truly laissez-faire
system, the ability to extract a profit from
labor and capital would be negligible.
Carson has argued the centralization of wealth
into a class hierarchy is due to state intervention
to protect the ruling class, by using a money
monopoly, granting patents and subsidies to
corporations, imposing discriminatory taxation
and intervening militarily to gain access
to international markets.
Carson's thesis is that under an authentic
free market economy, the separation of labour
from ownership and the subordination of labor
to capital would be impossible, bringing a
more egalitarian society in which most people
could easily choose self-employment over wage
labor.Carson has written sympathetically about
several anarcho-capitalists, arguing that
they use the word "capitalism" in a different
sense than he does and that they represent
a legitimate strain of anarchism.
He says "most people who call themselves individualist
anarchists today are followers of Murray Rothbard's
Austrian economics, and have abandoned the
labor theory of value".
With the release of his book, Studies in Mutualist
Political Economy, Carson aimed to revive
interest in mutualism.
In his book, he attempts to synthesize Austrian
economics with the labor theory of value,
or "Austrianize" it, by incorporating both
subjectivism and time preference.
=== Anarchist without adjectives ===
In recent years, Carson has moved away from
the "individualist", "mutualist" and "free
market" anarchist labels, not so much because
he repudiates any of their major tenets, but
because he has come to see them as excessively
constraining and to reject any monolithic
economic model as the defining template for
a post-capitalist society.
He now prefers the label "anarchist without
adjectives", counting among his major influences
Michel Bauwens and other writers on peer production,
autonomist Marxists like Antonio Negri and
Nick Dyer-Witheford and Elinor Ostrom's thought
on natural resource commons.
=== "Vulgar libertarianism" ===
Carson coined the pejorative term "vulgar
libertarianism" to describe the use of free
market rhetoric in defense of corporate capitalism
and economic inequality.
According to Carson, the term is derived from
the phrase "vulgar political economy", which
Karl Marx described as an economic order that
"deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic
and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of
existence the ideas which contain the contradictions
[existing in economic life]".
Carson writes: Vulgar libertarian apologists
for capitalism use the term "free market"
in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble
remembering, from one moment to the next,
whether they're defending actually existing
capitalism or free market principles.
So we get the standard boilerplate article
in The Freeman arguing that the rich can't
get rich at the expense of the poor, because
"that's not how the free market works"—implicitly
assuming that this is a free market.
When prodded, they'll grudgingly admit that
the present system is not a free market, and
that it includes a lot of state intervention
on behalf of the rich.
But as soon as they think they can get away
with it, they go right back to defending the
wealth of existing corporations on the basis
of "free market principles."
Much of Carson's writing is dedicated to critiquing
other writers whom he perceives as vulgar
libertarians.
A sporadically recurring feature on his blog
is called Vulgar Libertarian Watch.
=== Intellectual property and agriculture
===
Carson has been highly critical of intellectual
property.
In 2014, he wrote a piece for CounterPunch
drawing attention to the fact that the Pennsylvania
Department of Agriculture was investigating
the Pennsylvania Seed Library for "agri-terrorism".
The department was considering whether the
library's seed saving practices violate the
Seed Act 2004.
In 2016, the department decided that seed
libraries and non-commercial seed exchanges
are not subject to the requirements of the
Seed Act.
== Criticisms ==
Economist and anarcho-capitalist Walter Block
has characterized Carson as a Marxist for
his embrace of labor value exploitation theory
and argued that Carson's philosophy is full
of errors, mostly due to his acceptance of
the labor theory of value.
Block has commented that "for someone in this
day and age to even take this doctrine seriously,
let alone actually try to defend it, is equivalent
to making a similarly widely and properly
rejected position vis à vis the flat earth,
or the phlogiston theory.
It is, in a word, medieval".
Carson alleges that Block misrepresents many
of his views and probably did not actually
read his book.
Auburn University professor and Center for
a Stateless Society Senior Fellow Roderick
T. Long has criticized Carson's claim that
full private property rights do not stem from
the concept of self-ownership and presents
an argument that if one accepts self-ownership,
as Carson does, then non-Lockean proviso homesteading
rights must be accepted.
However, Long has accepted the concept of
public property as valid and written that
communities may acquire land "by collectively
homesteading", which could "[provide] a basis
for No-Proviso Lockeans to recognize as legitimate
the property arrangements of Mutualist, Georgist,
and Proviso-Lockean communities".In 2012,
Deric Shannon wrote that while he agreed with
Carson's criticism of the state violence used
to enforce capitalism, he felt that Carson's
solution—to eliminate the state—would
not bring about a society free of all forms
of oppression.
== Publications ==
Carson has published several books and produced
articles for a range of publications, including
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, CounterPunch,
Land&Liberty, Just Things and The Ecologist.
His writings have also appeared on the web
at The Art of the Possible, P2P Foundation
blog and AntiWar.Com.
The Anarchist FAQ has cited his work on political
economy.
The primary focus of his most recent work
has been decentralized manufacturing and the
informal and household economies.
=== Selected works ===
The Iron Fist behind the Invisible Hand (2001)
Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly-Capital
(2004)
Contract Feudalism (2006)
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007),
includes theoretical sections attempting to
integrate marginalist critiques into the labor
theory of value and was the subject of a symposium
in the Journal of Libertarian Studies
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
(2008)
The Ethics of Labor Struggle (2008)
The Great Domain of Cost-Plus: The Waste Production
Economy (2010)
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution (2010)
The Desktop Regulatory State (2016)
== See also ==
Anarchist economics
Cost the limit of price
Left-wing market anarchism
Post-scarcity economics
Prosumer
