Jonathan Meades’ documentary on brutalism was a fascinating insight into an often ignored period of architecture that had so much utopian promise and imagery behind it. Now the same institutions that commissioned these amazing projects have become the means to their destruction, acting as, Meades declares, sanctioned vandals. These vandals are part of the cadre of small is beautiful brigades which see any buildings representing industrialism and largesse as problematic to the surrounding environment and thus have a desire to see them destroyed and replaced by some eco-nonsense that makes little sense and is usually more of a blight on the environment than brutalist architecture. Continue reading →

I’ve heard it contended that when it comes to a multiplicitous anarchist social order, where anarcho-communists and anarcho-capitalists could live side by side in their own distinct communities, such an order would be practically impossible due to ancoms refusing to recognise the existence of property relations, as it is assumed ancoms deny the capacity for individual ownership of property as defined in the term “private property”. And because ancap economic theory is defined by a recognition of private property, the two communities could not exist together. Continue reading →

Local currencies in their praxis have many shortcomings when it comes to economic applications. Issues of supply chains and the adequacy of developed economies of scale are lacking in many local currency systems. However, such an economistic view ignores the actual political ramifications of local currencies. Certainly local currencies have issues when it comes their active efficacy, but this takes the view that economies, and currencies in particular, are defined by capitalist discourses and practices rather than different conceptions of what constitutes the economic realm. Such ideas constitute an idea of economy determined by capitalist definitions of efficiency and take a view of money as a neutral veil, part and parcel of a market economy. This “absolutization of the market”[1] ignores much of what an economy is actually constituted of. Thus in looking at local currencies, we see many political statements and social practices that while not economically practical do show a different type of money, one more embedded in social structures of local communities and actors. Continue reading →

To attribute to money a concept of bestowing freedom upon an individual owner may well exist as a theoretical possibility. Yet ownership is itself a contested concept. As is freedom. By bestowing freedom on the owner, it effectively prompts the dominance of certain types of power to come to the fore of monetary and economic relations. We can see this in Weber’s concept of a struggle for economic existence[1], whereby the formation of prices is a struggle for dominance, with money as the main weapon for such a struggle. Thus the use of money and with it the creation of prices for commodities is brought out of a struggle for who determines this, and who can win the best deal from such a battle. In this sense, capitalistic markets are the battleground for the domination of certain winners and losers, with the codification of power and dominance written into those who enter either of these two classifications. Continue reading →

Capitalism’s relation to spiritual attitudes and ideologies has been historically hostile. The use of magic and the holding of pagan beliefs in peasant communities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism was mercilessly crushed, as it was seen as a belief system that removed control from the mercantile elites and prevented the mechanistic control needed to create a class of wage labourers[1]. Along with the enclosure of the commons, and the warping of gender relations to fit new roles created for the purpose of capital accumulation, this is an attempt to engender new relations into the socio-economic sphere. Continue reading →