Larry Alan Busk
Biographic Data
| ID | 2292249 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Larry Alan Busk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Larry Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Busk |
| SIGNATURE | BUSK L A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Philosophy, Eckerd College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1120-4274 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Confronting Mises in a Warming World
This article reinterprets the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s with reference to climate change and planetary boundaries. It argues that the full significance of Mises’s critique of central planning has not been fully appreciated or rebutted by his leftist critics. The core of his argument concerns the lack of a performance evaluation criterion: While capitalism measures its success by profit rates, socialism has no metric to g…
Breaking the Fascist Spell
The People and the Population
This essay interrogates Amílcar Cabral’s distinction between “the population” and “the people” in the context of anticolonial liberation struggles. The former encompasses the totality of the existing individuals in a given geographical jurisdiction, while the latter includes only those committed to realizing the objective of ending colonial domination. This distinction represents a content-based understanding of the category of “the people,” a de…
The Formal and Real Subsumption of Gender Relations
Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary …
Climate Denial as Alienation
This paper develops an understanding of climate denial as an expression of alienation in the sense described by Marx. We first argue for an expanded and differentiated conception of climate denial, theorizing four distinct types that go beyond the simple rejection of an anthropogenic warming trend: naturalist denialism, technological denialism, gradualist denialism, and politicized denialism. We then claim that these forms of climate denial illus…
Power to the (Right) People
This article responds to four critics of Democracy in Spite of the Demos and reiterates its central thesis. Christopher Holman and Théophile Pénigaud attempt to maintain the critical value of democracy by invoking different elements of the deliberative tradition, while Benjamin Schupmann answers my charges by appealing to a strong liberal constitutionalism. I argue that these attempts repeat the ambivalence described and criticized in the book: d…
Degrowth or Class Struggle? A Critique of Matthew Huber's Climate Change as Class War
What Is “Totalitarian” Today
This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s account of “totalitarianism” in light of the climate catastrophe and the apparent inability of our political-economic system to respond to it adequately. In the last two chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt focuses on the “ideology” of totalitarian regimes: a pathological denial of reality, a privileging of the ideological system over empirical evidence, and a simultaneous feeling of total im…
Climate Change and the Irrational Society
This essay considers the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change in relation to two possible critical-theoretic dispositions. The first, represented by an emblematic passage from Adorno, retains the hope for the realization of a “rational society.” The second, represented by a complementary passage from Foucault, enjoins critical theory to abandon any ambition toward criticizing or transforming society at a totalizing level. We argue that the…
Interrogating the Right
Schmitt’s democratic dialectic
In this essay, I attempt to measure various prevailing democratic theories against an argument that Carl Schmitt advances in the first chapter of his ‘Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy’. In practice, he claims there, democratic politics is compelled to introduce a distinction between ‘the will of the people’ and the behaviour of the empirical people, thus justifying the bracketing and unlimited suspension of the latter in the name of the former, …
From the Epistemology of Ignorance to Rassenwahn
Climate X or Climate Jacobin
In Climate Leviathan, Mann and Wainwright address the political implications of climate change by theorizing four possible planetary futures: Climate Leviathan as capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Mao as non-capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Behemoth as capitalist non-planetary sovereignty, and Climate X as non-capitalist non-planetary sovereignty. The authors of the present article agree that the depth and scale of destabilizatio…
Radical Democracy with what Demos
This paper considers the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau with reference to the recent rise of Right-wing populism. I argue that even as Mouffe and Laclau develop a critical political ontology that regards democracy as an end in itself, they simultaneously exclude certain elements of the demos. In other words, they appeal to formal categories but decide the political content in advance, disqualifying Right-wing movem…
Who Are the True Machiavellians? Althusser and Merleau-Ponty Reading The Prince
This essay examines Machiavelli's dissonant relationship to the liberal tradition by drawing on the interpretations of Althusser and Merleau-Ponty. Reading The Prince following these critics allows us to see that, in an important sense, the ostensibly non- or anti-Machiavellian character of the liberal classics is nevertheless Machiavellian in an inadvertent way. In other words, liberal political theory is Machiavellian in form, even if anti-Mach…
It's a Good Life? Adorno and the Happiness Machine
Degrowth or Class Struggle? A Critique of Matthew Huber's Climate Change as Class War
It's a Good Life? Adorno and the Happiness Machine
The Formal and Real Subsumption of Gender Relations
Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary …
Schmitt’s democratic dialectic
In this essay, I attempt to measure various prevailing democratic theories against an argument that Carl Schmitt advances in the first chapter of his ‘Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy’. In practice, he claims there, democratic politics is compelled to introduce a distinction between ‘the will of the people’ and the behaviour of the empirical people, thus justifying the bracketing and unlimited suspension of the latter in the name of the former, …
From the Epistemology of Ignorance to Rassenwahn
Climate X or Climate Jacobin
In Climate Leviathan, Mann and Wainwright address the political implications of climate change by theorizing four possible planetary futures: Climate Leviathan as capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Mao as non-capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Behemoth as capitalist non-planetary sovereignty, and Climate X as non-capitalist non-planetary sovereignty. The authors of the present article agree that the depth and scale of destabilizatio…
Radical Democracy with what Demos
This paper considers the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau with reference to the recent rise of Right-wing populism. I argue that even as Mouffe and Laclau develop a critical political ontology that regards democracy as an end in itself, they simultaneously exclude certain elements of the demos. In other words, they appeal to formal categories but decide the political content in advance, disqualifying Right-wing movem…
It's a Good Life? Adorno and the Happiness Machine
Who Are the True Machiavellians? Althusser and Merleau-Ponty Reading The Prince
This essay examines Machiavelli's dissonant relationship to the liberal tradition by drawing on the interpretations of Althusser and Merleau-Ponty. Reading The Prince following these critics allows us to see that, in an important sense, the ostensibly non- or anti-Machiavellian character of the liberal classics is nevertheless Machiavellian in an inadvertent way. In other words, liberal political theory is Machiavellian in form, even if anti-Mach…
Radical Democracy with what Demos
This paper considers the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau with reference to the recent rise of Right-wing populism. I argue that even as Mouffe and Laclau develop a critical political ontology that regards democracy as an end in itself, they simultaneously exclude certain elements of the demos. In other words, they appeal to formal categories but decide the political content in advance, disqualifying Right-wing movem…
Climate X or Climate Jacobin
In Climate Leviathan, Mann and Wainwright address the political implications of climate change by theorizing four possible planetary futures: Climate Leviathan as capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Mao as non-capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Behemoth as capitalist non-planetary sovereignty, and Climate X as non-capitalist non-planetary sovereignty. The authors of the present article agree that the depth and scale of destabilizatio…
Schmitt’s democratic dialectic
In this essay, I attempt to measure various prevailing democratic theories against an argument that Carl Schmitt advances in the first chapter of his ‘Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy’. In practice, he claims there, democratic politics is compelled to introduce a distinction between ‘the will of the people’ and the behaviour of the empirical people, thus justifying the bracketing and unlimited suspension of the latter in the name of the former, …
From the Epistemology of Ignorance to Rassenwahn
What Is “Totalitarian” Today
This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s account of “totalitarianism” in light of the climate catastrophe and the apparent inability of our political-economic system to respond to it adequately. In the last two chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt focuses on the “ideology” of totalitarian regimes: a pathological denial of reality, a privileging of the ideological system over empirical evidence, and a simultaneous feeling of total im…
Climate Change and the Irrational Society
This essay considers the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change in relation to two possible critical-theoretic dispositions. The first, represented by an emblematic passage from Adorno, retains the hope for the realization of a “rational society.” The second, represented by a complementary passage from Foucault, enjoins critical theory to abandon any ambition toward criticizing or transforming society at a totalizing level. We argue that the…
Interrogating the Right
The People and the Population
This essay interrogates Amílcar Cabral’s distinction between “the population” and “the people” in the context of anticolonial liberation struggles. The former encompasses the totality of the existing individuals in a given geographical jurisdiction, while the latter includes only those committed to realizing the objective of ending colonial domination. This distinction represents a content-based understanding of the category of “the people,” a de…
The Formal and Real Subsumption of Gender Relations
Attempts to unify Marxist and feminist social critique have been vexed by the fact that ‘patriarchy’ predates the advent of capitalism (its transhistorical status). Feminists within the Marxist, socialist, and materialist traditions have responded to this point by either granting patriarchy a certain autonomy relative to capitalism (the ‘dual/triple systems’ approach), or by suggesting that patriarchal relations have a foundational and necessary …
Climate Denial as Alienation
This paper develops an understanding of climate denial as an expression of alienation in the sense described by Marx. We first argue for an expanded and differentiated conception of climate denial, theorizing four distinct types that go beyond the simple rejection of an anthropogenic warming trend: naturalist denialism, technological denialism, gradualist denialism, and politicized denialism. We then claim that these forms of climate denial illus…
Power to the (Right) People
This article responds to four critics of Democracy in Spite of the Demos and reiterates its central thesis. Christopher Holman and Théophile Pénigaud attempt to maintain the critical value of democracy by invoking different elements of the deliberative tradition, while Benjamin Schupmann answers my charges by appealing to a strong liberal constitutionalism. I argue that these attempts repeat the ambivalence described and criticized in the book: d…
Degrowth or Class Struggle? A Critique of Matthew Huber's Climate Change as Class War
Confronting Mises in a Warming World
This article reinterprets the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s with reference to climate change and planetary boundaries. It argues that the full significance of Mises’s critique of central planning has not been fully appreciated or rebutted by his leftist critics. The core of his argument concerns the lack of a performance evaluation criterion: While capitalism measures its success by profit rates, socialism has no metric to g…
Breaking the Fascist Spell
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (3 works)