The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto by Kevin A. Carson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Introductory Material (pdf)
Part One–Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Sloanist Mass Production
Chapter One. A Wrong Turn, and the Path Not Taken (pdf)
A. Preface: Mumford’s Periodization of Technological History
B. The Neotechnic Phase
C. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Neotechnic Revolution
Chapter Two. Moloch: The Anatomy of Sloanist Mass-Production Industry (pdf)
Introduction
A. Institutional Forms to Provide Stability
B. Mass Consumption and Push Distribution to Absorb Surplus
C. State Action to Absorb Surplus: Imperialism
D. State Action to Absorb Surplus: State Capitalism
E. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (A Critique of Sloanism’s Defenders)
F. The Pathologies of Sloanism
G. Mandatory High Overhead
Chapter Three. Babylon is Fallen (pdf)
Introduction
A. Resumption of the Crisis of Overaccumulation
B. Resource Crises (Peak Oil)
C. Fiscal Crisis of the State
D. Decay of the Cultural Pseudomorph
E. Failure to Counteract Limits to Capture of Value by Enclosure of the Digital Commons
F. Networked Resistance, Netwar and Asymmetric Warfare Against Corporate Management
Part Two–Zion: The Renaissance of Decentralized Production\
Chapter Four. Back to the Future (pdf)
A. Home Manufacture
B. Relocalized Manufacturing
C. New Possibilities for Flexible Manufacturing
Sidebar on Marxist Objections to Non-Capitalist Markets: The Relevance of the Decentralized Industrial Model
Chapter Five. The Small Workshop, Desktop Manufacturing, and Household Microenterprise (pdf)
A. Neighborhood and Backyard Industry
B. The Desktop Revolution and Peer Production in the Immaterial Sphere
C. The Expansion of the Desktop Revolution and Peer Production into the Physical Realm
C1. Open-Source Design: Removal of Proprietary Rents from the Design Stage, and Modular Design.
C2. Reduced Transaction Costs of Aggregating Capital.
C3. Reduced Capital Outlays for Physical Production.
D. The Microenterprise
Appendix. Case Studies in the Coordination of Networked Fabrication and Open Design
#1. Open Source Ecology/Factor e Farm.
#2. 100k Garages
#3. Assessment
Chapter Six. Resilient Communities and Local Economies (pdf)
A. Local Economes of Bases of Independence and Buffers Against Economic Turbulence
B. Historical Models of the Resilient Community
C. Resilience, Primary Social Units, and Libertarian Values
D. LETS Systems, Barter Networks, and Community Currencies
E. Community Bootstrapping
F. Contemporary Ideas and Projects
*Jeff Vail’s Hamlet Economy
*Global Ecovillage Networking
*The Transition Town Movement
*Global Villages
*Venture Communism
*Decentralized Economic and Social Organization (DESO)
*The Triple Alliance
Chapter Seven. The Alternative Economy as a Singularity (pdf)
A. Networked Production and the Bypassing of Corporate Nodes
B. The Advantages of Value Creation Outside the Cash Nexus
C. More Efficient Extraction of Value from Inputs
D. The Implications of Reduced Physical Capital Costs
E. Strong Incentives and Reduced Agency Costs
F. Reduced Costs from Supporting Rentiers and Other Useless Eaters
G. The Stigmergic Non-Revolution
H. The Singularity
Conclusion
Appendix. The Singularity in the Third World
Bibliography (pdf)
January 12, 2010 at 6:33 am |
Do you have a more convenient form of access than scribd? I always find that that doesn’t work without javascript and images enabled, and not very well even then (e.g., slow as well as defective, and putting stuff in the way of whatever else I want to keep in view whenever I try to move a cursor onto something nearby – which is even more distracting because it jumps in and out). A single ASCII text file, zipped and/or plain, would be ideal.
January 12, 2010 at 11:05 am |
I’m afraid I don’t know of any way to publish the texts on this blog other than linking to them.
January 12, 2010 at 2:37 pm |
[…] 12 January, 2010 · Leave a Comment The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low Overhead Manifesto […]
January 12, 2010 at 5:05 pm |
Hi Lawrence. I have had an account on scribd for ages, and it is possible to download the plain text version of the PDFs, although I’ve never tried it myself. I could possibly send the files over to you by email.
January 12, 2010 at 9:06 pm |
I meant, link to them in a format and at a site where they could be accessed conveniently. I have no problems even getting at PDFs elsewhere – but I plain can’t navigate to anything scribd has anywhere, even if for all I knew they had plain ASCII text. It’s not blog links to files that are the problem – I could use them for earlier Kevin Carson works – it’s using scribd as a repository.
January 13, 2010 at 8:26 am |
Kevin, get in touch with me and I can help you get those texts on the blog if you desire.
January 13, 2010 at 1:11 pm |
Thanks, Jeremy. I think I’ll post them as pdfs at Mutualist.Org and link to them there, so PML can access them.
January 14, 2010 at 8:49 am |
Ah! Something fooled me. I took the “(pdf)”s to be part of the same links I couldn’t use, indicating that scribd offered pdf downloads, not taking them as separate links to pdf files. (I don’t have good enough colour discrimination to distinguish the black bracket separating the two blue parts, and I only spotted it when I revisited a failed attempt and saw that in a visited dark red different enough to sort out.)
Maybe “(pdf)” should be reworded “(click here for pdf version)”, or similar?
January 14, 2010 at 12:26 pm |
Actually, PML, I added the pdf links to Mutualist.Org yesterday evening in response to your request.
January 14, 2010 at 7:33 pm |
I thought I hadn’t seen the links earlier anyway, but I wasn’t 100% sure (even though the last two weren’t up yet). Even so, I didn’t spot them at first when I looked yesterday because, e.g., “Chapter One. A Wrong Turn, and the Path Not Taken (pdf)” looked like all one link. “Chapter One. A Wrong Turn, and the Path Not Taken (click here for pdf version)” with “Chapter One. A Wrong Turn, and the Path Not Taken” and “here” etc. highlighted as links would have been clearer.
January 23, 2010 at 12:02 pm |
[…] Table of Contents « The Homebrew Industrial Revolution – I've been look forward to this: "Kevin Carson’s third book manuscript is available in unfinished form — The Homebrew Industrial Revolution A Low Overhead Manifesto." […]
January 27, 2010 at 10:31 am |
[…] both, then join the conversation in the comment thread below. And while you're at it, check out The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, a book-in-progress by frequent Hit & Run commenter Kevin Carson, who sees the developments […]
January 31, 2010 at 5:07 pm |
[…] of the Case Studies in the Coordination of Networked Fabrication and Open Design in the Appendix of Chapter 5. If you are interested in a comprehensive overview and of the technological ecology that […]
February 14, 2010 at 9:05 am |
You know you could always use a downloading site like Rapidshare, or Megaupload to host your files.
March 27, 2010 at 5:47 am |
I found that Google Books had a scan of The Fiscal Crisis of the State, if anyone is interested in looking up the references: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=K6L-qAdXqBwC&lpg=PA179&ots=nBS8m_RKGp&dq=The%20Fiscal%20Crisis%20of%20the%20State&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
March 28, 2010 at 2:10 am |
There is less of the book there than I thought (sorry!)
May 17, 2010 at 9:01 pm |
You need to take a look at the laws being passed to put small, independent farmers (especially livestock) out of business.
The state can always throw a monkey wrench in the form of regulations. (You can’t manufacture within a 1000 yards of a school, or in a residential neighborhood, or without a million inspections, insurance packages, and taxes.)
(For example, see the requirements in the health care package for individual business owners doing business of more than 600 dollars with any company…. you need an army of tax accountants.)
May 17, 2010 at 10:11 pm |
Thanks, Zendo Deb. I agree the RFID stuff is horrendous. I can’t recall if I referred to it specifically in Ch. 2 along with CPSIA, but I discussed the general principle: anything that increases overhead costs also increases the size of the revenue stream required to service them, which means you’ve got to do large batch production to minimize costs.
June 15, 2010 at 10:39 am |
[…] industry, household microenterprises and resilient local economies. More detailed info can be found here at the authors blog as well as the book in PDF form. An important book in preparing for a likely […]
June 22, 2010 at 10:35 pm |
[…] The Home Industrial Revolution Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Improving Workshop Efficiency […]
September 22, 2010 at 10:46 am |
[…] The Homebrew Industrial Revolution A Low Overhead Manifesto « Table of Contents […]
October 4, 2010 at 9:21 am |
[…] Но в процессе написания обнаружил одну занятную ссылку. […]
March 22, 2011 at 11:06 pm |
[…] Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto (you can check it out for free online here). Over the next several weeks, I will conclude with the last series of two excerpts each from […]
March 25, 2011 at 12:55 pm |
[…] Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto (you can check it out for free online here). Over the next few weeks, I will conclude with the last series of two excerpts each from […]
August 20, 2011 at 2:25 pm |
[…] in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available online. Advertisement GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); […]
March 25, 2012 at 12:58 pm |
An excellent an amazing work. I’m currently using many of these concepts in a series of blog posts, synthesizing your ideas with the growth of System D, government failure, political activism, agorist concepts, and a number of other ideas into my own vision of the coming conflict and transformation of society. I’m making an effort to adequately attribute your concepts, and providing regular references back to this site. I don’t have a large readership, but I hope I drive some portion of those readers back here to read your book. Thanks for a huge helping of food for thought.
March 28, 2012 at 1:05 pm |
I’ve found this a truly fascinating read thus far. It’ll take me a while to finish it, but I’ve found information here I probably wouldn’t have found myself. It’s a great contribution to the ideas I have floating around in my own head, thanks.
September 19, 2012 at 3:36 pm |
[…] Kevin A. Carson: The Homebrew Industrial Revolution; A Low Overhead Manifesto. Actually a large free PDF e-book, also including an academic case study on Factor e Farm. […]
December 26, 2013 at 1:33 pm |
Looks awesome. I’m developing software so that project makers can interconnect, collaborate, and publish projects for a global community of homebrewed innovation. It is a stigmergic (self-organizing) system that currently exists in a paper form which can be deployed on a cork-board for hackerlabs and makerspaces. Thanks Kevin!
March 28, 2014 at 4:43 pm |
[…] איכות: אני מאמינה שייצור ביתי עולה בפרמטרים רבים על ייצור חרושתי. קווין קרסון כתב על זה ספר מצוין שזמין להורדה חינם כאן. […]