Author: Matt Bruenig

This book about poor people is not basically about rich people

Some people really loved the Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844, which Marx never published. I call those people alienation Marxists or sometimes species-being Marxists. Those from high socioeconomic backgrounds seem especially prone to becoming species-being Marxists, presumably because all the stuff about exploiting the proletariat is of little use to them personally. Chris Maisano,… Continue reading This book about poor people is not basically about rich people

False statistic: 76 percent of American faculty are adjuncts

Miya Tokumitsu has a solid piece in Jacobin about the issues with the “Do What You Love” work advice. She makes a mistake at one point thought: The reward for answering this higher calling is an academic employment marketplace in which 76 percent of American faculty are adjunct professors — contract instructors who usually receive low… Continue reading False statistic: 76 percent of American faculty are adjuncts

The other move on property

In my prior post, I wrote about the way that the involuntary coercive violence inherent in property ownership means that those who advocate it cannot consistently oppose taxes on the grounds that taxation is involuntary coercive violence. Here I want to detail one thing libertarians can and have done, in some of my engagements, to… Continue reading The other move on property

How the property is coercive violence move functions in the debate

Libertarians are not the brightest bulbs. So I want to explain how my obviously correct argument that property is coercive violence works in debates. As a refresher, property is obviously coercive violence because it involves someone excluding everyone else in the world from some piece of the world without their consent and threatening violence against… Continue reading How the property is coercive violence move functions in the debate