Eric Laursen

Understanding the Modern State

from Anarchist Agency

an Interview with Eric Laursen

Agency: Your recently published book The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State. Why the State? What inspired you to tackle such a monumental subject at this time? Eric Laursen: Mainly the fact that it hasn’t really been done before. I’ve identified as an anarchist for just about my entire adult life, and early on, I was struck by the fact that the so-called “classic” anarchists – Kropotkin, Bakunin, Goldman, etc – never analyzed in an extended way what the State was.

Review: The Operating System by Eric Laursen

"The Operating System: An Anarchist Analysis of the State" (2021) by Eric Laursen VS "The Desktop Regulatory State: The Countervailing Power of Individuals and Networks" (2016) by Kevin Carson

from Center for a Stateless Society

by Kevin Carson

Laursen is wrong, in my opinion, to define statism in entirely qualitative rather than quantitative terms, and to posit such a low threshold of engagement with the state (anything that “occupies cracks and corners within the operating system,” or relies on “infrastructure of roads, airports, housing, postal systems,” etc.) as sufficient for defining it as a component of the state.

Review of Laursen's new book on anarchism and the state

"The operating metaphor: a clickbait title for what passes for theory"

from Anarkismo by Wayne Price

His overriding metaphor of the state is as a master operating system. Whatever its advantages in showing society as dynamic and interacting, it leads to underestimating the internal conflicts within the society, such as between capitalists and the state. Particularly, it leads to downplaying the class conflict within capitalism. The book is also weak in considering what an alternate social system might be like.

Eric Laursen on IGDcast

from It's Going Down

Eric Laursen on Why Everything We’ve Been Told About the Political State is Wrong

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with Eric Laursen, author of The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State, who argues that everything we think we know about the creation and function of the political State is fundamentally wrong. During our conversation, Laursen lays out how the State did not arise out of a collective need, nor was it created organically; that instead, it was imposed from above as an instrument to amass wealth and expand economic and military control.

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