The commodification process is inherent in valueless transactions. By valueless, I mean that which corresponds to no inherent human need or want and is instead that of a particular class or vested interest. Polanyi identified three such valueless commodities: land, labour and money. All of these things have become the play thing of those in power i.e. government and its corresponding regulatory and corporate power. Continue reading →

What is the nature of hierarchy? and how does it square with anarchism, a philosophy that is supposedly firmly grounded in the idea of rejecting hierarchy. Of the latter statement, it is certainly true that anarchists of most shades reject hierarchy outright as a repressive social tool that holds down the weak. This is seen in the works of Kropotkin, Bakunin and modern anarchists like Black. However, what if the hierarchy is voluntary? How is it enforced then? Humans are social creatures, and some accept a lot in life that is subordinate to other individuals. Continue reading →

Within the UK land is controlled in the strangest of ways. Planning laws constrain building projects and artificially inflate the price of land. Through this de-facto government control, land is then made available to the most wealthy of companies and speculators, who do one of two things. Either they land bank, assuming inflationary increases well above general affordability. The creation of a series of corporate landowners akin to the aristocracy of old develops. The second is to develop the land for expensive housing or useless infrastructure projects, usually with subsidisation from local or national government. This leads to landlordism, as the houses are bought by potential landlords to rent out at high rates. This all leads back to speculation and land centralisation which creates artificially high prices, restricting the movement of people into a certain area and blocking small business and local infrastructure development. Continue reading →

The labour market as it stands is awash with exploitation. Low-skilled workers are treated as temporary labour to be used at a whim, with no ability for such workers to organise and demand job security and a wage relative to their circumstances. There are two main reasons for this. The first are wage and employment laws which lock low-skill workers into low-paid jobs. These laws create a wage ceiling which many corporate employers exploit as a means of paying the minimum and providing minimal hours. Second are the anti-trade union laws put in place by Thatcher that have allowed for a hegemony of modern corporate unions that talk the rhetoric of workers’ rights but frankly aren’t up to it. Continue reading →

Both capitalism and socialism are systems of control, controlled by powerful elites who rely on expropriation and corrupt political power. To be a libertarian, I can’t seriously support either system as they are reliant on centralising structures. In the case of capitalism, it is a liquid state controlled by large bureaucracies and multinational corporations that use rigged markets to peddle oppression and provide minimal choice, making individuals into mindless consumers. With socialism, there are also large bureaucracies. However the state doesn’t pretend to be minimal, taking control of the means of production and creating a political class of yes-men and busybodies. Continue reading →

Modern localism has been about the devolution of minimal political and economic power to large regional governance structures, like the Northern Powerhouse or the Greater London Authority. This localism is paltry and creates more bureaucracy and regulation. It simply serves a political narrative of supposed localism while in fact maintaining the state’s vast power systems. This isn’t helped by a confused political scheme, with a mess of district, county and town councils that makes it difficult to devolve powers without political power overlapping and becoming arbitrary. It needs to be cleaned up, with clear delineations between political entities, meaning laws and authority don’t overlap and create pointless confusion. Continue reading →

With the Chancellor’s announcement that he intends to raise the minimum wage to £7.20 soon and by 2020 raise it to £9.00, creating what he terms a “national living wage”, which will be fully enforced irrelevant of business size, employee numbers or company turnover, it seems that the Chancellor has moved completely away from any economic rationality and straight into the world vote-buying and political pandering. Of course the kind of political nonsense that is the living wage could be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Continue reading →

Black Nationalism has been harangued as the black person’s equivalent of white supremacy and is akin to the Ku Klux Klan. However, this precept, which was and has been placed upon organisations and individuals like the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, has no basis in actual reality. Rather, what Black Nationalists advocate is self-reliance, organised communities and the ability to develop individual and group identities not influenced or tainted by national governments and corporate capitalism. Continue reading →

The social contract, in essence, is the idea that individuals within a area/territory collectively agree to the establishment of a sovereign via a contract of sorts. This concept, if truly worked out via law and direct democracy, could be a solution to the ever growing immigration problems being seen in Western nations, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. Continue reading →