Imagine
a capitalist paradise. An island utopia governed solely by the rules
of the market and inspired by the fictions of Ayn Rand and Robinson
Crusoe. Sound far-fetched? It may not be. The past half century is
littered with the remains of such experiments in what Raymond Craib
calls “libertarian exit.” Often dismissed as little more than the
dreams of crazy, rich Caucasians, exit strategies have been tried out
from the southwest Pacific to the Caribbean, from the North Sea to
the high seas, often with dire consequences for local inhabitants.
Based on research in archives in the US, the UK, and Vanuatu, as well
as in FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act,
Craib explores in careful detail the ideology and practice of
libertarian exit and its place in the histories of contemporary
capitalism, decolonization, empire, and oceans and islands.
Adventure
Capitalism
is a global history that intersects with an array of figures: Fidel
Castro and the Koch brothers, American segregationists and Melanesian
socialists, Honolulu-based real estate speculators and British
Special Branch spies, soldiers of fortune and English lords, Orange
County engineers and Tongan navigators, CIA operatives and CBS news
executives, and a new breed of techno-utopians and an old guard of
Honduran coup leaders. This is not only a history of our time but,
given the new iterations of privatized exit—seasteads, free private
cities, and space colonization—it is also a history of our future.