The Free

Obituary: James C. Scott had a huge influence on SE Asian, agrarian, and anarchist studies

Scott may not have identified publicly but he certainly was an anarchist.

from thefreeonline James C. Scott (1936-2024) 25/7/24 by FreedomNews (on Telegram t.me/thefreeonline)

James C. Scott, Farmer and Scholar of Anarchism

A prolific scholar, he had a monumental influence on Southeast Asian, agrarian, and anarchist studies

Researcher and author James C. Scott passed away in his Connecticut home on July 19. He was 87 years old. His seminal works include The Moral Economy of the Peasant, Weapons of the Weak, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Seeing Like a State, The Art of Not Being Governed, Two Cheers for Anarchism, and Against the Grain.

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott – Audiobook

Scott grew up in New Jersey, receiving a Quaker education. The Quaker social gospel and week-long work camps at homeless shelters, prisons and the like made a deep impression on his worldview and politics. At Williams College he was studying Political Economy with a focus in Economics but fell in love in his senior year and was distracted from his studies.

When he went to defend his baccalaureate thesis his advisor rejected his work. Forced to find a new sponsor, he happened upon the door of economist William Hollinger, who was curious about the economic development of Burma (Myanmar).

He became an advisor to Scott, who after finishing his BA applied to the Graduate Program in Economics at Yale. Scott had an opportunity to visit North Africa that summer which conflicted with taking the calculus course, causing his transfer to the Political Science department.

Scott decided that in order to call himself a ‘peasantist’ he needed to actually engage in ethnographic fieldwork — a move his fellow political scientists thought was career suicide at worst, and a waste of time at best.

How to Change Everything – Rewriting the Fairy Tale of Capitalism – key Monbiot Interview /Trailer/ Book link-

An interview with The Ink, about where we are, how we got here and where we need to go.

from thefreeonline on 25th July 2024 George Monbiot, interviewed by The Ink – ( on Telegram:t.me/thefreeonline )

Authors and activists George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison want to tell a better story for humanity’s future

Ebook HERE… Invisible Doctrine – The Secret History of Neoliberalism

TI: Can you walk us through how you define neoliberalism” — the “Invisible Doctrine” of the book’s title. And of “capitalism,” for that matter?

GM: Let’s start with capitalism. It’s often portrayed as if it were some kind of natural law, a basic property of human relations. It is nothing of the kind. Capitalism is a very particular form of economic organisation, which, following the work of the geographer Jason Moore, we date to the island of Madeira in roughly 1450.

(Trailer) THE INVISIBLE DOCTRINE: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& how it came to control your life) -https://vimeo.com/828431285

This was arguably the first time and place in which land, labour and money were simultaneously commodified. The success of the Portuguese colonists, the first capitalists, set in train a particular mode of extreme and rapid exploitation, which led simultaneously to the explosion of colonial seizure and to the cascading collapse of ecosystems. We define capitalism as follows:

“Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labour and money into commodities that can be accumulated.”

FIND US ON: FACEBOOK FILM FREEWAY

Capitalism expanded with few constraints in its early centuries. Its advocates demanded that governments “laissez-nous faire”: leave us alone. But then it ran into a problem, a problem it has sought to solve ever since: democracy.

When most adults got the vote, they sought to use it to improve wages and labour conditions, demand a greater share of productivity gains, and make other outrageous requests, such as not poisoning the air and rivers, adulterating food or charging extortionate rents.

They even went so far as to demand the redistribution of wealth, effective public services and an economic safety net. Neoliberalism was hatched as a means of solving the problem of democracy.