It may, however, be worth while to point out another line of influence along which the dominance of the teleological preconception shows itself in Adam Smith. This is the normalization of data, in order to bring them into consonance wi...
Continue reading "On the Function of Money in Adam Smith according to Veblen and Graeber" »
[1] Adam Smith…was determined to overturn the conventional wisdom of his day. Above all, [2] he objected to the notion that money was a creation of government. [3] In this, Smith was the intellectual heir of the Liberal tradition of ph...
Continue reading "On David Graeber Against Adam Smith" »
But for us, the key point to remember is that we are not talking here about ‘freedom’ as an abstract ideal or formal principle (as in ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity!’). Over the course of these chapters we have instead talked about ...
Continue reading "Freedom in The Dawn of Everything, Pt 1." »
THERE IS A STRONG TENDENCY for all of us to regard what is as if it were the “natural” or “normal” state of affairs, to lack perspective because of the tyranny of the status quo. It is, therefore, well, from time to time, to make a del...
I find that I am generally at peace, and that the balance between happiness and sadness on any given day is little different from what it always has been for me. I find that there is liberation in this suspension of more or less everyt...
Continue reading "On Pandemics, Debt Jubilees, and the Suspension of More or Less Everything" »
But then I look at the stereotyped Non-Western philosophy list and I can't help but notice another thing - it's a rejection of things that contemporary heirs to the Romantic tradition hate. Fair enough, they are trying to draw out what...
Continue reading "Decolonizing the Curriculum and Viewpoint Diversity" »
The second year I was in Elbow, I was worklister, the mill syndicate cut rations. People doing six hours in the plant got full rations just barely enough for that kind of work. People on half time got three-quarter rations. If they wer...
Continue reading "The Dispossessed (Spoilers), Pt 4.: on the limits of Anarchism" »
A full account of abolition would require a book in its own right and would cover the countless acts of resistance, subversion, and bravery by enslaved people throughout history. It would also cover efforts from formerly enslaved peopl...
Continue reading "On What we Owe the Future, Part 2 (some polemic)" »
Comment by Eric Schliesser on “On Necessity and Smithian Social Explanation”
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 02/25/2014 at 01:05 PM