Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty is a new collection of left-wing pro-market, anticapitalist anarchist writing, edited by Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson. Individualist anarchists believe in mutual exchange, not economic privilege. They believe in freed markets, not capitalism. They defend a distinctive response to the challenges of ending global capitalism and achieving social justice: eliminate the political privileges that prop up capitalists. Massive concentrations of wealth, rigid economic hierarchies, and unsustainable modes of production are not the results of the market form, but of markets deformed and rigged by a network of state-secured controls and privileges to the business class. Markets Not Capitalism explores the gap between radically freed markets and the capitalist-controlled markets that prevail today. It explains how liberating market exchange from state capitalist privilege can abolish structural poverty, help working people take control over the conditions of their labor, and redistribute wealth and social power. Featuring discussions of socialism, capitalism, markets, ownership, labor struggle, grassroots privatization, intellectual property, health care, racism, sexism, and environmental issues, this unique collection brings together classic essays by leading figures in the anarchist tradition, including Proudhon and Voltairine de Cleyre, and such contemporary innovators as Kevin Carson and Roderick Long. It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism.
If I had a motto these days, it would be, "Give peace a chance." I hope my writing and speaking can help people find ways to craft patterns of social life marked by peaceful, voluntary cooperation.
Everything I've published to date has been non-fiction. I write about law, politics, ethics, and religion, largely from a philosophical perspective.
My philosophical work is very much in the analytic tradition, though I'm inclined to embrace the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and David Ray Griffin. My metaphysics informs my religious views, in turn: a Christian, born into the Seventh-day Adventist community, I've gained a lot from encounters with the Dutch Reformed tradition; with Catholics like Karl Rahner, Nicholas Lash, and Henri Nouwen; and with the Anglican communion (think Austin Farrer and John Macquarrie, among others).
My work in ethics and political philosophy reflects my own idiosyncratic take on the "new classical natural law" theory articulated by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Politically, I'm a left-wing market anarchist. I take anarchism to be the project of doing without the state. I support the elimination of states and their replacement by a diverse array of consensual communities in which people experiment with ways of being human and of being free: I favor panarchy or "anarchy without adjectives."
I'm a market anarchist because (while I don't think all communities should be forced into a cookie-cutter mold), I'd opt for a state-free community in which people enjoyed robust individual possessory rights and were free to structure relationships through exchange. My market anarchism is left-wing because I support inclusion and oppose subordination, deprivation, and aggressive and preventive war. I own the individualist anarchists as forebears; I'm happy to identify as both, in something like the sense suggested by Benjamin Tucker, a socialist and a libertarian. I appreciate Kevin Carson's mutualism and his critique of "vulgar libertarianism," and I welcome the recovery by Carson, Brad Spangler, and others of "socialism" for use by libertarians.
My day job is as associate dean of La Sierra University's School of Business. At La Sierra, I teach courses in business ethics, global poverty, employee and labor relations, religion and science, political philosophy, theology, and social theory. On a more personal level: I'm sentimental and nostalgic. I'm an insomniac, an early riser, a geek, a technophile, and a vegetarian. I abhor authority. Friendship is central to who I am. Born in Glendale, I've lived in SoCal most of my life and it still moves and excites me. I write, teach, and work as an academic bureaucrat. My wife and I explore the region and devour TV shows via Netflix. And I read, and read, and read.
