Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective is a 2008 book written by Kevin Carson which explores the various concepts associated with organizations (such as data, information, efficiency, size, distribution, innovation, firm behaviour, costs, hierarchy, law, regulations and management) from a anarchists perspective. The book also outlines how a hypothetical mutualist economy would alter how the distribution data and efficiency would change within firms.
Summary
Part One: State Capitalist Intervention in the Market
1. A Critical Survey of Orthodox Views on Economy of Scale
Market economies seem to be dominated by large, inefficient organisations called corporations. This is not a result of natural market forces, but excessive state intervention in the market, despite this, 'bigger is better' is defended by Marxian, Austrian and Liberal economists under the concept of 'economies of scale'.
2. A Literature Survey on Economies of Scale
3. State Policies Promoting Centralization and Large Organizational Size
Capitalism began by massive acts of state violence and restrictions on liberty in the process of primitive accumulation. This was done by four main measures in the late 1700s and early 1800s:
- Expropriation of common peasant land to be used as private holdings for the construction of private property.
- Restrictions on freedom of working class movement through proto-passport systems in England.
- Restrictions on the bargaining power of the working class through the banning of train unions.
- Creation of a global market through tariffs and imperialism.
There have been five major efforts by the state in the last 200 years to centralise economic power away from small-scale enterprises and worker cooperatives into large corporations. The first was the Nineteenth Century Corporate Legal Revolution, the creation of nationwide commerce laws across countries, the establishment of corporations (originally agents of the state like the British East India Company)
Part Two: Systemic Effects of Centralization and Excessive Organizational Size
4. Systemic Effects of State-Induced Economic Centralization and Large Organizational Size
Part Three: Internal Effects of Organizational Size Above That Required for Optimum Efficiency
5. Knowledge and Information Problems in the Large Organization
6. Agency and Incentive Problems within the Large Organization
7. Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth (the Corporation as Planned Economy)
8. Managerialism, Irrationality and Authoritarianism in the Large Organization
9. Special Agency Problems of Labor (Internal Crisis Tendencies of the Large Organization)
10. Attempts at Reform from Within: Management Fads
Part Four: Conjectures on Decentralist Free Market Alternatives
11. The Abolition of Privilege
12. Structural Changes: The Cost Principle
13. Dissolution of the State in Society
14. Decentralized Production Technology
15. Social Organization of Production: Cooperatives and Peer Production
16. The Social Organization of Distribution, Exchange and Services
External Links
- Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective at mutualist.org