Kevin Carson has posted his his first paper, Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles over at theCenter for a Stateless Society that I would like to comment on.

Carson, of course, is a well-known left libertarian critic of "Corporate Liberalism" and especially of modern day corporate organization theory attributed to Alfred Chandler. Whereas, for example, the Chandler School views technological shocks(say, the 2nd Industrial Revolution) as purely exogenous, and the
Chandlerian Managerial Firm as a rational organization development to mobilize capital necessary to exploit such shocks, Carson borrows heavily from "revisionist" historical deconstructivism that places a much greater premium on Political class expropriation of technology as the basis the modern industrial enterprise. In the latter view, strict technological determinism is rejected for a more a contextual treatment that views the evolution of technology and the modern corporation heavily intertwined with Statist intervention/interference(a recent example is Gerald Berk's, Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865-1917 that places much more emphasis on politics as opposed to technological imperatives in shaping 20th Century Corporate Liberalism).

At the forefront of such an interpretation is the role "War" and "militarism" has played in shaping the evolution of the modern industrial State. For example, New Left historian, William Appleman Williams views the Civil War as greatly fascilitating 19th century industrialism, or as he put it: "the Civil War "produced an industrial system rather than being fought with one." Williams is also credited with coining the term "Open Door Imperialism" to describe the behavior of American Foreign Policy under the influence of "Corporate Liberalism." Essentially,this doctrine posits "the use of U.S. political power to guarantee access to foreign markets and resources on terms favorable to American corporate interests, without relying on direct political rule." A libertarian interpretation of William's Open Door Imperialism is that domestic cartelization a la State Capitalism leads to sectoral “overproduction,” and hence to demands for overseas markets. For a historical examination of this concept from a libertarian perspective, reference The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire by Joseph Stromberg published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.

Using Williams' Open Door Imperialism model to examine historical context, it's fairly trivial to conclude how Wars, starting with the Civil War and extrapolating up to the current War on Terror, simply serve as testosterone shots for the Corporatist State and the Chandlerian Managerial Firm. Nevertheless Carson views Corporate Liberalism as standing on it's last legs, driven to the precipice of collapse because "Peak Oil" will prevent further state subsidization of energy inputs necessary to sustain the the type of demand that makes the Chandlerian Firm viable. Thus, Carson forecasts a "collapse event" that will sweep away the Chandlerian Firm and in it's stead will rise the household firm and the worker cooperative, geared more toward local production. Freed from State subsidy and the influence of politics, technology will be naturally incorporated into the social relations of the community(rather than driving the social makeup of the community), thus finally giving rise to the Mumford neotechnic era of decentralized production.

While I generally agree with Carson's critiques of Corporate Liberalism itself,I tend to strongly disagree with his embrace of a "Peak Oil" collapse event (for a particularly dire forecast of such a collapse, reference this recent post by Jim Kunstler that seems to be simultaneously channeling both Matthew Simmons and Peter Schiff to concoct a particularly nasty scenario) to trigger his vision of a new socio-economic order built around neotechnic decentralization. Firstly, I think Peak Oil at this time is bunk; supply has not reached it's peak, and secondly, assuming for the sake of argument that it has, I would project that Americans would embrace outright fascism as an attempt to preserve their way of life before going gently into that good night of decentralized anarchy, which would drastically impact most for the worse at the start. Be careful what you wish for. The collapse of the Wiemar Republic didn't result in a triumph of anarcho-syndicalism; rather it resulted in the anarchists being rounded up and shot.

My next point of objection with Carson is that technologically the Neotechnic electricity era is in the rear view mirror of the 20th century. The 21st century will be the ea of the molecular nanotech machine. At this point, it is an open question whether nanotechnology will be expropriated by the Political classes so that we end up merely repeating the lessons of the 20th century or whether nanotechnology,and in general, the wider elements of the coming technological singularity will serve as a liberating influence from the Corporatist State. To the extent that (left) libertarianism embraces the "collapse" instead of the "jump," I would posit it largely loses any relevancy. Sitting around and speculating how Peak Oil is going to force everyone to move in with grandma and learn how to garden to produce their own food, while the real questions revolve around who controls the future is an exercise in wishful thinking. And we will be long gone by the time 22nd century revisionist historians get around to deconstructing the influence of State Capitalism on the evolution of the 21st century Nanotechnological/Knowledge Firm.