Chris Shaw - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Chris Shaw

The Libertarian Ideal, 2017

This essay looks at the problems surrounding the organisation of resistance amongst home-based wo... more This essay looks at the problems surrounding the organisation of resistance amongst home-based workers. It investigates a variety of home-based worker movements and activist groups that are developing resistance through multiple different logics. The major problem for organisation currently emanates from the amount of control held over home-based workers by a combination of patriarchal household control and corporate centralisation which contracts and subcontracts out to households, integrating them as flexible production units in wider neo-Fordist forms of production and exchange. From this reality many discursive narratives are produced that legitimate the position of home-based workers in global supply chains. They are seen as micro-entrepreneurs or as a form of Westernised worker, who are in need of legal representation and regulatory apparatuses that provide stability while maintaining degrees of risk and flexibility. This masks the degrees of precariatisation these labour forces face. Thus resistance that overly focuses on the identity of home-based workers as ‘workers’ is problematic as such identities are still integrable to globalised production processes and corporate control. Instead, looking toward new ethical/value systems that develop a wider household political economy, like certain movements are already beginning to do, can develop new infrastructures and means of resistance against these centralised forms of control.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2017

In this essay I look into the constructed nature of central bank independence (CBI) as a socio-ec... more In this essay I look into the constructed nature of central bank independence (CBI) as a socio-economic concept. CBI is presented as a major element of modern economic orthodoxy, seen as the natural progression of economic history where states become less powerful and the market alongside independent quasi-regulatory institutions become more powerful. However, looking at the developing ideational and political understandings that emplaced this neoliberal framework, we can see a political construction to CBI. CBI is part of a discourse that sees the economy as a rational entity, always moving toward equilibrium with states and the voting public being interfering actors who distort the market, and interprets crises as originating from these interfering actors. Thus we also see changes in the patterns of politics and voting (particularly in the UK and US) which show a move toward a new form of electoral public, represented by the median voter and an individuated consumer of politics rather than a politicised, partisan public. These shared political and ideational understandings form a wider epistemic community which constructs a socio-economic ideology that legitimates neoliberal economic governance and a narrowed dialogic democracy, providing a political basis through which CBI could be developed and legitimated.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2017

In this essay I argue that Brexit must be understood as a conjunctural event that has discohered ... more In this essay I argue that Brexit must be understood as a conjunctural event that has discohered the way politics is understood in Britain. The de-axiomatised explanations of the EU referendum so far present a fragmented socio-economic explanation for both the European Union referendum result and for the political attitudes that characterise the resultant Brexit. However, looking through a neoliberal axiomatic understanding and a range of polling data related to the EU referendum, we can see that many voters who voted leave can be seen to be the discontents of globalisation, those left behind economically. However this macro-level variable does not cohere to the micro-level processes of the voters, who voted overwhelmingly due to cultural and national issues such as immigration and national sovereignty. Due to the extent of neoliberal subjectivation in the UK which individualises economic activity and creates a politics of consensus, economic issues became difficult to articulate as they lack a collective socio-economic subject. Thus the referendum acted as a de-economised catalyst, where people's grievances were funnelled through a culturation of politics. This culturation is continuing post-referendum, as voters' cultural and national concerns come to the fore of politics, leading toward processes of trasformismo and co-optation where the governing elites, particularly in the Conservative Party, are adopting this cultural rhetoric and re-engineering it into a form of neoliberalism with Brexit characteristics. Brexit then is not a revolt of the masses against neoliberal globalisation, but an event that is being slowly reabsorbed into the prevailing modes of production and politics. (Key words: Brexit, EU referendum, modes of politics, neoliberalism, subjectivation, conjuncture, governance)

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

This essay investigates the Marxian concept of general equivalence, that of the relation of commo... more This essay investigates the Marxian concept of general equivalence, that of the relation of commodities and wage labour in an homogenised field of value constructed for the maintenance of capitalist social relations. Throughout I make comparisons with other theories of capitalism, particularly the Five Monopolies theory, as well as structuring the theory of general equivalence within an historical understanding of capitalist accumulation from the Enclosures to the development of the precariat. Finally, I contrast this theory with the anarchist conception of freed markets, contrasting their theoretical and existential realities.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

This article examines markets as structures independent of capitalist socio-economic organisation... more This article examines markets as structures independent of capitalist socio-economic organisation. It rethinks markets as economic tools that can be placed in radically different economic systems far removed from the normalities of capitalism. By examining how markets are shaped by five monopolies created by state intervention and artificial economies of scale that rely on massive subsidisation, I see how some of the fundamentals of capitalism, the factor markets and capital-labour relations, are reshaped in a conception of free markets that are not influenced by capitalist agency. I go on to see how the Austrian School's subject of the individual as an agent of subjective economic desires is changed when placed within structures of free, or freed, markets. The institutions of markets, the surplus value distribution and the multiple social relations that present themselves as possible under a regime of rethought markets shows this subject as instituted in a diverse economy of possibilities and existences. I then examine how, even under capitalism, such a diverse economy already exists on the peripheries and in the interstices of the modern economy.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

In this essay I look at how the British state engenders unnatural inclusion and exclusion of migr... more In this essay I look at how the British state engenders unnatural inclusion and exclusion of migrants and asylum seekers through theoretical definitions, xeno-racist policies and entry barriers to socioeconomic realms of life which limit the capacity of these groups to integrate and participate in civil society. Rather than looking at the framework of migration and inclusion through the lens of either settled populaces and their feelings of racism or through the blaming of migrants for not integrating, I want to see how state policies allow for such narratives to expand which limit the development of both bonding and bridging capital, and, when pushed through certain defined variants of community, create the kind of conditions seen in Sighthill, Glasgow. This then breeds misconceptions about migration, and means the fragmentation of communities among settled populaces and migrant networks.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

In this paper I examine the role of global social movements in redefining and deconstructing capi... more In this paper I examine the role of global social movements in redefining and deconstructing capitalism and the role of the state within it. I look into this paradigm through the praxis of subjective and objective ontologies and the idea of global social movements being new social movements who aim to transform and co-opt capitalist socio-economic organisation. Within this, I look at two major global social movements: the anti-globalisation movement and the Fairtrade movement.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2015

In this paper I explore capitalism and corporations through the lense of Tucker's four monopolies... more In this paper I explore capitalism and corporations through the lense of Tucker's four monopolies, and Carson's fifth. I break down how each of these structural monopolies creates corporate capitalism and sustains it through the creation of an overarching wage labour monopoly. Further, I show how it creates favourable regulatory apparatuses, a corporate infrastructure and a hierarchical, consumerist culture.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2015

Adam Smith was not a critic of free markets as much modern scholarship has tried to show. Instead... more Adam Smith was not a critic of free markets as much modern scholarship has tried to show. Instead, he provided an early critique of what is now called corporatism, or even crony capitalism, where the state plays a determining role in the economy.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2015

In this paper I look at the effects of the UK's national minimum wage on non-university educated ... more In this paper I look at the effects of the UK's national minimum wage on non-university educated 18-21 year olds. I find that the effects are generally negative, with a significant disemployment effect, as well as other effects such as underemployment, an increase in economic precarity and a lack of job-based training.

Talks by Chris Shaw

The aim of this talk is to look into the idea of a libertarian moment, whereby there will be a pa... more The aim of this talk is to look into the idea of a libertarian moment, whereby there will be a particular turning point in the political environment that will provide a pathway for libertarian policies and forms of governance. This idea is encapsulated in the statement, "many people are libertarians, they just don't know it yet". Looking in particular at the UK and its political context, as well as parts of the US political makeup, I hope to show why this moment has probably passed on by, and how libertarianism in its current guise has failed to mobilise on a social, economic or political front. From that, I hope to offer ideas and questions that may push forth newer conceptions of libertarianism that can address these failures. I'll start with an anecdote. I went to a Conservative student society debate last year, where in a discussion around conservative ideology I revealed I was a libertarian. It was upon this point that he said, "oh you mean like David Davis". This statement seems to encapsulate the problem libertarianism as both an ideology and a movement faces, that being that a significant number of people don't know what it means or what it represents. Such a problem goes to the heart of libertarian engagement with modern politics, as the messages of liberty and free markets are packaged in ways that aren't interesting, engaging or particularly informative to the concerns of the modern electorate. However it goes further than this, as political engagement doesn't just mean convincing voters during an election or setting up a political party. It also means academic engagement, and engagement with businesses and civil society organisations and other political entities that exist throughout and within the governmental system. On these fronts, there is in my opinion a failure of libertarian engagement, whether in the inability to gain sufficient representation or to push a radical program of free markets and the decentralisation of political and regulatory power. And I think this springs from the inability to develop a coherent message, to fully articulate and provide understandings of what free markets are and the radical potential they bring to change people's lives. With the modern failures of the state, libertarians could begin to develop narratives that criticise the fundamental issues that afflict people, such as the state's inability to regulate huge sections of the economy, as was obvious with the banking crisis and the subsequent bailouts in 2007-08. The housing and planning systems are another area ripe for critique when it comes to the involvement of the British state and local governments in limiting supply, driving up prices and subsidising landowners and landlords through a vastly complex, incomprehensible system of taxes, benefits and subsidies. It could seriously be argued, with the events of Brexit and the surge of turnout for Jeremy Corbyn, as well as similar events in Europe and America, that the Western polity, the modern idea of the state, it itself in significant crisis. Its failure at engagement, as with poor voter turnout figures and the increasing popularity of alternative media sources and forms of populism, suggest it is facing crises of legitimacy that question the innate purpose of vast political machineries and bureaucracies that get very little done in the way of regulatory initiative or efficient use of taxpayer money. Similarly, the range of economic institutions are also being brought into question, losing their legitimacy as the realities of low-pay, low-productivity and pitiful economic growth begin to bite. In the recent UK election, nominally considered a game-changer by political standards as there was supposed to be a real choice on offer, turnout was still only 69%. It involved offering a range of free goodies with no actual explanation for how they would be implemented, and yet still could barely creep up to 3/4 of the registered electorate. During the US election, we saw two of the most unpopular candidates ever fielded, and a turnout that barely limped over the 50% mark. There may have been room for an alternative that offered neither the stereotypical nonsense presented by Clinton, nor the populism of Trump, but it didn't materialise. There are significant crises in legitimacy that are found within Western states and the large economic authorities (corporations, lobbyists and independent regulators), and thus

The Libertarian Ideal, 2017

This essay looks at the problems surrounding the organisation of resistance amongst home-based wo... more This essay looks at the problems surrounding the organisation of resistance amongst home-based workers. It investigates a variety of home-based worker movements and activist groups that are developing resistance through multiple different logics. The major problem for organisation currently emanates from the amount of control held over home-based workers by a combination of patriarchal household control and corporate centralisation which contracts and subcontracts out to households, integrating them as flexible production units in wider neo-Fordist forms of production and exchange. From this reality many discursive narratives are produced that legitimate the position of home-based workers in global supply chains. They are seen as micro-entrepreneurs or as a form of Westernised worker, who are in need of legal representation and regulatory apparatuses that provide stability while maintaining degrees of risk and flexibility. This masks the degrees of precariatisation these labour forces face. Thus resistance that overly focuses on the identity of home-based workers as ‘workers’ is problematic as such identities are still integrable to globalised production processes and corporate control. Instead, looking toward new ethical/value systems that develop a wider household political economy, like certain movements are already beginning to do, can develop new infrastructures and means of resistance against these centralised forms of control.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2017

In this essay I look into the constructed nature of central bank independence (CBI) as a socio-ec... more In this essay I look into the constructed nature of central bank independence (CBI) as a socio-economic concept. CBI is presented as a major element of modern economic orthodoxy, seen as the natural progression of economic history where states become less powerful and the market alongside independent quasi-regulatory institutions become more powerful. However, looking at the developing ideational and political understandings that emplaced this neoliberal framework, we can see a political construction to CBI. CBI is part of a discourse that sees the economy as a rational entity, always moving toward equilibrium with states and the voting public being interfering actors who distort the market, and interprets crises as originating from these interfering actors. Thus we also see changes in the patterns of politics and voting (particularly in the UK and US) which show a move toward a new form of electoral public, represented by the median voter and an individuated consumer of politics rather than a politicised, partisan public. These shared political and ideational understandings form a wider epistemic community which constructs a socio-economic ideology that legitimates neoliberal economic governance and a narrowed dialogic democracy, providing a political basis through which CBI could be developed and legitimated.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2017

In this essay I argue that Brexit must be understood as a conjunctural event that has discohered ... more In this essay I argue that Brexit must be understood as a conjunctural event that has discohered the way politics is understood in Britain. The de-axiomatised explanations of the EU referendum so far present a fragmented socio-economic explanation for both the European Union referendum result and for the political attitudes that characterise the resultant Brexit. However, looking through a neoliberal axiomatic understanding and a range of polling data related to the EU referendum, we can see that many voters who voted leave can be seen to be the discontents of globalisation, those left behind economically. However this macro-level variable does not cohere to the micro-level processes of the voters, who voted overwhelmingly due to cultural and national issues such as immigration and national sovereignty. Due to the extent of neoliberal subjectivation in the UK which individualises economic activity and creates a politics of consensus, economic issues became difficult to articulate as they lack a collective socio-economic subject. Thus the referendum acted as a de-economised catalyst, where people's grievances were funnelled through a culturation of politics. This culturation is continuing post-referendum, as voters' cultural and national concerns come to the fore of politics, leading toward processes of trasformismo and co-optation where the governing elites, particularly in the Conservative Party, are adopting this cultural rhetoric and re-engineering it into a form of neoliberalism with Brexit characteristics. Brexit then is not a revolt of the masses against neoliberal globalisation, but an event that is being slowly reabsorbed into the prevailing modes of production and politics. (Key words: Brexit, EU referendum, modes of politics, neoliberalism, subjectivation, conjuncture, governance)

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

This essay investigates the Marxian concept of general equivalence, that of the relation of commo... more This essay investigates the Marxian concept of general equivalence, that of the relation of commodities and wage labour in an homogenised field of value constructed for the maintenance of capitalist social relations. Throughout I make comparisons with other theories of capitalism, particularly the Five Monopolies theory, as well as structuring the theory of general equivalence within an historical understanding of capitalist accumulation from the Enclosures to the development of the precariat. Finally, I contrast this theory with the anarchist conception of freed markets, contrasting their theoretical and existential realities.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

This article examines markets as structures independent of capitalist socio-economic organisation... more This article examines markets as structures independent of capitalist socio-economic organisation. It rethinks markets as economic tools that can be placed in radically different economic systems far removed from the normalities of capitalism. By examining how markets are shaped by five monopolies created by state intervention and artificial economies of scale that rely on massive subsidisation, I see how some of the fundamentals of capitalism, the factor markets and capital-labour relations, are reshaped in a conception of free markets that are not influenced by capitalist agency. I go on to see how the Austrian School's subject of the individual as an agent of subjective economic desires is changed when placed within structures of free, or freed, markets. The institutions of markets, the surplus value distribution and the multiple social relations that present themselves as possible under a regime of rethought markets shows this subject as instituted in a diverse economy of possibilities and existences. I then examine how, even under capitalism, such a diverse economy already exists on the peripheries and in the interstices of the modern economy.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

In this essay I look at how the British state engenders unnatural inclusion and exclusion of migr... more In this essay I look at how the British state engenders unnatural inclusion and exclusion of migrants and asylum seekers through theoretical definitions, xeno-racist policies and entry barriers to socioeconomic realms of life which limit the capacity of these groups to integrate and participate in civil society. Rather than looking at the framework of migration and inclusion through the lens of either settled populaces and their feelings of racism or through the blaming of migrants for not integrating, I want to see how state policies allow for such narratives to expand which limit the development of both bonding and bridging capital, and, when pushed through certain defined variants of community, create the kind of conditions seen in Sighthill, Glasgow. This then breeds misconceptions about migration, and means the fragmentation of communities among settled populaces and migrant networks.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2016

In this paper I examine the role of global social movements in redefining and deconstructing capi... more In this paper I examine the role of global social movements in redefining and deconstructing capitalism and the role of the state within it. I look into this paradigm through the praxis of subjective and objective ontologies and the idea of global social movements being new social movements who aim to transform and co-opt capitalist socio-economic organisation. Within this, I look at two major global social movements: the anti-globalisation movement and the Fairtrade movement.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2015

In this paper I explore capitalism and corporations through the lense of Tucker's four monopolies... more In this paper I explore capitalism and corporations through the lense of Tucker's four monopolies, and Carson's fifth. I break down how each of these structural monopolies creates corporate capitalism and sustains it through the creation of an overarching wage labour monopoly. Further, I show how it creates favourable regulatory apparatuses, a corporate infrastructure and a hierarchical, consumerist culture.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2015

Adam Smith was not a critic of free markets as much modern scholarship has tried to show. Instead... more Adam Smith was not a critic of free markets as much modern scholarship has tried to show. Instead, he provided an early critique of what is now called corporatism, or even crony capitalism, where the state plays a determining role in the economy.

The Libertarian Ideal, 2015

In this paper I look at the effects of the UK's national minimum wage on non-university educated ... more In this paper I look at the effects of the UK's national minimum wage on non-university educated 18-21 year olds. I find that the effects are generally negative, with a significant disemployment effect, as well as other effects such as underemployment, an increase in economic precarity and a lack of job-based training.

The aim of this talk is to look into the idea of a libertarian moment, whereby there will be a pa... more The aim of this talk is to look into the idea of a libertarian moment, whereby there will be a particular turning point in the political environment that will provide a pathway for libertarian policies and forms of governance. This idea is encapsulated in the statement, "many people are libertarians, they just don't know it yet". Looking in particular at the UK and its political context, as well as parts of the US political makeup, I hope to show why this moment has probably passed on by, and how libertarianism in its current guise has failed to mobilise on a social, economic or political front. From that, I hope to offer ideas and questions that may push forth newer conceptions of libertarianism that can address these failures. I'll start with an anecdote. I went to a Conservative student society debate last year, where in a discussion around conservative ideology I revealed I was a libertarian. It was upon this point that he said, "oh you mean like David Davis". This statement seems to encapsulate the problem libertarianism as both an ideology and a movement faces, that being that a significant number of people don't know what it means or what it represents. Such a problem goes to the heart of libertarian engagement with modern politics, as the messages of liberty and free markets are packaged in ways that aren't interesting, engaging or particularly informative to the concerns of the modern electorate. However it goes further than this, as political engagement doesn't just mean convincing voters during an election or setting up a political party. It also means academic engagement, and engagement with businesses and civil society organisations and other political entities that exist throughout and within the governmental system. On these fronts, there is in my opinion a failure of libertarian engagement, whether in the inability to gain sufficient representation or to push a radical program of free markets and the decentralisation of political and regulatory power. And I think this springs from the inability to develop a coherent message, to fully articulate and provide understandings of what free markets are and the radical potential they bring to change people's lives. With the modern failures of the state, libertarians could begin to develop narratives that criticise the fundamental issues that afflict people, such as the state's inability to regulate huge sections of the economy, as was obvious with the banking crisis and the subsequent bailouts in 2007-08. The housing and planning systems are another area ripe for critique when it comes to the involvement of the British state and local governments in limiting supply, driving up prices and subsidising landowners and landlords through a vastly complex, incomprehensible system of taxes, benefits and subsidies. It could seriously be argued, with the events of Brexit and the surge of turnout for Jeremy Corbyn, as well as similar events in Europe and America, that the Western polity, the modern idea of the state, it itself in significant crisis. Its failure at engagement, as with poor voter turnout figures and the increasing popularity of alternative media sources and forms of populism, suggest it is facing crises of legitimacy that question the innate purpose of vast political machineries and bureaucracies that get very little done in the way of regulatory initiative or efficient use of taxpayer money. Similarly, the range of economic institutions are also being brought into question, losing their legitimacy as the realities of low-pay, low-productivity and pitiful economic growth begin to bite. In the recent UK election, nominally considered a game-changer by political standards as there was supposed to be a real choice on offer, turnout was still only 69%. It involved offering a range of free goodies with no actual explanation for how they would be implemented, and yet still could barely creep up to 3/4 of the registered electorate. During the US election, we saw two of the most unpopular candidates ever fielded, and a turnout that barely limped over the 50% mark. There may have been room for an alternative that offered neither the stereotypical nonsense presented by Clinton, nor the populism of Trump, but it didn't materialise. There are significant crises in legitimacy that are found within Western states and the large economic authorities (corporations, lobbyists and independent regulators), and thus