Tom Palmer, rothbardiano renegado, escribe una interesante reseña de The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
Understanding the nature of such zones where political control “runs out of breath” is not merely of interest to historians and social scientists. It’s central to understanding many things about the modern world, including the difficulties that NATO and its allied forces face in Afghanistan, the problems with other nation-building campaigns around the globe, the nature and costs of resistance to predatory state power, and the evolutionary relationship between tax systems and economic structures—that is, between systems of theft and structures of production. In effect, Scott gives us a libertarian geography.
Scott draws on the insights of Pierre Clastres, whose 1974 book Society Against the State undermined the narrative of the progressive transition from archaic society to state-governed civilizations by showing how a variety of Native American tribes developed systems to keep the state at bay. Such groups did not merely “fail to develop a state”; they succeeded in keeping one from developing.
Eduardo Robredo también se hacía eco de esta obra en su blog.
