The Operating System: An anarchist Theory of the Modern State

What do we mean when we talk about 'the State'? Multiple polls show a growing disillusionment with the State and representative government as vehicles for progressive change, and particularly as means to tame capitalism, let alone as a basis for seeing beyond it. In a quick and readable format, Eric Laursen proposes thinking about the State in an entirely new way - not simply as government or legal institutions, but as humanity's analogue to a computer operating system opening up a new interpretation of the system of governance that emerged in Europe five-hundred years ago and now drives almost every aspect of human society.

About the Author :
Eric Laursen is an independent journalist, historian, and activist. He is the author of The People's Pension and The Duty to Stand Aside. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including In These Times, The Nation, The Village Voice, Counterpunch, The Arkansas Review, and Z Magazine. He lives in Buckland, Massachusetts. Maia Ramnath is a historian and author of Decolonizing Anarchism and Haj to Utopia.

Review :
"Much of the ground Laursen covers in this book is already familiar to most anarchists. He does an adequate job, or better, at all of it. His treatment of the ideological hegemony of the state is exceptional, and deserves to be read alongside thinkers like Chomsky and Hermann." --Kevin Carson, Senior Fellow at Center for a Stateless Society

"By what cunning perversion of logic and history has the modern capitalist State persuaded us that it is the only possible form of polity? Why do we passively accept its claim to inevitability and its lame excuses for the increasingly invasive surveillance of our private lives? How do the already powerful hide short-cuts to even greater influence and wealth across a ruined environment and vast stretches of poverty? In thoughtful, provocative, and engaging reflections on the modern State, Eric Laursen seeks deliberate withdrawal from the self-fulfilling mechanism he so appropriately calls 'the operating system.'" --Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University

"We hear from many quarters that social justice requires a strong and competent State to redress wrongs and advance the interests of oppressed minorities. We also hear it said that the State is dead or nearly so, that it is being drowned in the bathtub of neoliberal capitalism. Eric Laursen presents a sobering argument that the modern State has not said its last word, nor have we heard the final word about the oppressive character of the State and the urgent necessity of its abolition. The Operating System is a much-needed patch to the software of anti-authoritarian critique, particularly in its attention to the way that the State and identity-based forms of oppression work together." --Jesse Cohn, author of Underground Passages

"Eric weaves together a rich history of the State, reminding us it is not inevitable and that it is not reformable. Learning to live together without the State is our best chance for the survival of humanity and the planet herself." --Lisa Fithian, author of Shut It Down

"Anarchists have fought the State since its inception, but along the paths of liberation in the twenty-first century it's been missing from the conversation. Laursen's engaging exploration revisits ideas of the State, its apparatus of controls, and why we should openly oppose it." --Scott Crow, author of Black Flags and Windmills