Eric Laursen is an independent journalist, historian, and activist. He is the author of The People’s Pension, The Duty to Stand Aside, The Operating System, and Polymath.
Eric Laursen is an independent journalist, historian, and activist. He is the author of The People’s Pension, The Duty to Stand Aside, The Operating System, and, most recently, Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, Author of The Joy of Sex. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including In These Times, the Nation, and the Arkansas Review. He lives in Buckland, Massachusetts.
The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political feuds—and friendships—in 20th-century English literature. It examines the arguments that divided George Orwell, future author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Alex Comfort, poet, biologist, anarchist-pacifist, and future author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex—during WWII. Orwell maintained that standing aside, or opposing Britain’s war against fascism, was “objectively pro-fascist.” Comfort argued that intellectuals who did not stand aside and denounce their own government’s atrocities—in Britain’s case, saturation bombing of civilian population centers—had “sacrificed their responsible attitude to humanity.”
One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system like Windows or MacOS. Like a state, an operating system “governs” the programs and applications under it and networked with it, as well as, to some extent, the individuals who avail themselves of these tools and resources. No matter how different states seem on the surface they share core similarities, namely:
- The State is a relatively new thing in world history
- The State is European in origin and outlook
- States are “individuals” in the eyes of the law
- The State claims the right to determine who is a person
- The State is an instrument of violence and war
- The State is above the law
- The State is first and foremost an economic endeavor
Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the amateurish response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense. The state won’t solve our most pressing problems, so why do we obey? It’s time to think outside the state.
Polymath is the first biography of one of the most remarkable and wide-ranging intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. Alex Comfort was a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, activist, and anarchist, and the author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex. He played a vital role in making gerontology (the study of aging) a viable branch of modern science, energizing the direct-action movement for nuclear disarmament, revitalizing anarchism as a political philosophy in the post-World War II decades, and persuading twelve million readers of his most popular book to banish guilt and anxiety from sex in favor of pleasure and closer human understanding.
The Joy of Sex spent eleven weeks atop the NYT bestseller list—and seventy-two weeks in the top five. But the book took on a life of its own as a couple generations of youth and adults used The Joy of Sex as a tool to understand pleasure outside the realm of guilt and shame and opened the doors to a healthier sexual culture.
Comfort liked to say that everything he did was part of “one big project”: to bring about a new consciousness, grounded in science, of the importance of personal responsibility in human relationships, including the obligation to disobey when authority was being exercised abusively. Polymath traces the intersection in Comfort’s life and work between biology and literature, anarchism and humanism, sex and sociality, and how his writings, research, and activism continue to shed critical light on the moral and political choices we make today. Laursen’s book relates the event-filled life of a brilliant and complex figure, including his victory over a possibly career-ending disability, his tumultuous second marriage, his struggles with the scientific establishment, and the fascinating story of the making of The Joy of Sex. It will be vital reading for anyone who wants to understand how the personal became political and the political became personal in the last one hundred years.
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Social Security, not for nothing do politicians call it the “third rail of American politics—touch it, and you die.” Yet a powerful, well-funded movement to phase out Social Security or even privatize it has been gathering strength since the election of Ronald Reagan. Each time it comes close to succeeding, it's beaten back by a coalition of labor, grassroots organizers, and the elderly. Meanwhile, Social Security has only become more vital to retirees and their families as the federal and state governments slash other benefits and services—a trend that’s grown ever more troubling in recent years.
The People’s Pension is both groundbreaking history and an eye-opening guide for anyone concerned about one of the biggest issues of our times. With 95 percent of Americans participating in the program either as beneficiaries or through their payroll tax contributions, Social Security is quite literally the glue that binds Americans together as a community. In a provocative epilogue, Laursen argues to democratize, not disable, the program, suggesting that the only solution for Social Security may be to de-link it from government altogether.