Mutualist Political Economy ebook

Following the AFAQ, now you can get Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy in an ebook format as well.

Cover of Mutualist Political EconomyAfter converting the AFAQ to an ebook format, I’ve thought I might as well release some of the other stuff I’ve converted for my personal use. One of them is Studies in Mutualist Political Economy which I’ve been reading lately. Like the AFAQ, I’ll provide you below with a few popular versions for ebooks along with the master copy which you can use to create your own versions.

  • pdf – 9x12cm with index
  • rtf
  • epub
  • odt – master copy in open document format

Of course, I’ve already contacted Kevin Carson to get the OK for this and apparently the book is available on a copyleft license (GFDL? He didn’t specify) so I can post the files here without problem. Eventually he’s going to host the files on his own site as well.

Since I’m on the subject, perhaps it would be appropriate to say a few things about the content of the book. For someone like me who basically self-educated on libertarian socialism as who has come to the conclusion that the labour theory of value applies, a synthesis of LTV with Marginalism sounded promising. However, even though I enjoyed the refutation of Böhm-Bawerk’s criticism of the LTV, the actual synthesis didn’t impress me. I won’t make a substancial critique here (perhaps another time) but I’ll say that too much weight was given to Austrian “axioms” and shaky conclusions about free markets.

Nevertheless, it’s still an interesting book and it was the first time I read soemething from the Mutualist perspective. If nothing else, it gave me a few more ideas to write about and pointed out some differences between that and social anarchism.

Hacked Simplelife

At the request of a commenter who is also playing around with his simplelife plugin, I’m uploading my currently hacked version.

It’s not pretty so you won’t be able to change all options on the profile (only the ones included in the original) but I’ve included comments in the code so you should be able to figure out what is what.

You will need the Simplepie core WordPress plugin in order to use it.

Currently this version supports the following extras (Over the original simplelife)

In order to make it work for your own lifefeeds, you will need to edit the php code directly. You will have to edit either the ones I’ve set up (for example, change your digg username) or add your own.

To add a new feed you need to do the following

  • Add the new class for it (Defining colour, background and icon)
  • Add a new variable for the feed url
  • Add a new variable for the title that will be used in the chart. Optionaly you can set it to something specific but if you don’t want to, the script will just draw it out of the feed
  • Add a new variable for the counter.
  • Add the new feed url variable in the SimplePie array. Your new feed will need dates so don’t use something like Ponyfish.
  • Create a new if statement (just follow my comments)
  • Optionally, if you’re using getboo or something similar, add a new switch for the subtags
  • Add the title and counter variables to the chart if you want them tracked. You’re better off copy-pasting one of the current entries in the middle and pasting it below. If you copy and paste to the bottom of the chart, you’ll probably add an extra comma where you shouldn’t. Don’t forget to change the small chart as well.

If you have any questions, let me know.

PS: I am currently waiting for version 1.3 to come out so that I can merge all my changes in the new code but it seems to be taking too long. I think I might as well start beatifying it in order to upload it as standalone.

Download the hacked version of the Simplelife WordPress plugin here.