#agorist class theory

[miochimochi]

Marxian class theory is a failure. There are other class theories from anarchists that hold up better. Wally Conger's Agorist class theory, for example.

#anarchism #anarchy #market anarchism #agorism #agora #marx #marxism #class #class war #class conflict #class analysis #class theory #marxian class theory #marxist #wally conger #Agorist class theory #agorist

[nicklloydnow]

“The higher you ascend the ladder of the Educated Gentry class, the more you become Michael Scott. (…) So, twelve years ago, Venkatesh Rao wrote a lengthy and fascinating series of essays called “The Gervais Principle”, which walked through the NBC show The Office, an American adaptation to Ricky Gervais’ original British series. The essays go after a particular aspect of organizational behaviour, around how organizations that survive tend to self-stratify into three predictable layers. (To a large extent, his analysis derives from another magnificent book, The Organization Man by Holly Whyte.)

  In the bottom layer, you have around 80% of the office, who occupy the rank-and-file roles. They are the losers. Rao carefully notes that “losers” does not mean uncool, or unworthy; he specifically means “economic losers.” Losers are the people who are set in roles or stations in life where the output of their effort is wholly realized by someone else. As they learn throughout their careers, their skill or engagement might lead to incremental career progress, but no real leverage of any kind. Hence, they are “economic losers”, and they know it. They see the world through clear eyes, and cope. (…) Meanwhile, at the top you have Corporate. These are the sociopaths; the economic winners. They are smart, they care about getting power, and little else. The sociopath characters in The Office include: David Wallace, the CFO; Jan (before her series of breakdowns); Ryan the temp, who brilliantly grabs real power only to immediately squander it. And finally, the one character who never quite goes over to the dark side but certainly thinks about it (the real will-he-or-won’t-he drama of the show) – Jim.

  The losers and the sociopaths are actually pretty alike. They are alike in that they both see the world through clear eyes, as it actually is. The losers basically understand how the world works, and how their role fits within it. So do the sociopaths.

  But in the middle, in between the losers and the sociopaths, is a very different group. That group is the middle managers: the clueless. In The Office this group is an iconic trio: in ascending order of cluelessness, Andy, Dwight, and of course – Michael. (…) Michael’s job both shapes, and selects for, a particular kind of detachment from reality. Middle management is a fascinating construct: your employees have literal jobs and responsibilities, and your bosses have literal jobs and responsibilities, but Michael spends his entire day in a construct of his own creation. Everything about his world is subjective and arbitrary. These are people who, in effect, have slipped into a job, worldview, and self-image that is friendly but deeply alienating. (…) The first major speech pattern between the characters is Posturetalk. Posturetalk is everything said by Michael, Dwight and Andy, to anyone: the staff, the execs, or each other. Everything they say is some form or another of meaningless, performative babbling. This is the language of living inside a construct; where your entire world lives within arbitrarily drawn boxes, and you have nothing concrete to attach to. It’s the only language that Michael knows how to speak.

  When people speak back to Michael, Dwight and Andy, they use a different language: Babytalk. Babytalk is the language spoken from the literal, to the clueless. It’s placating, soothing, or often misdirection: “There, there. You have no idea what you’re saying. Why don’t I distract you with something over here.” The three other languages spoken, which don’t involve the Clueless, are Powertalk (the Sociopaths’ internal language, which is entirely about competitive information-gathering and retroactive deniability), Gametalk (The Losers’ internal language: recurring games or coded rituals to get through the day), and the rare instance where Corporate actually speaks directly with the losers: Straight Talk. It’s the one and only time where people actually speak directly, with zero encoding. (…) Several years ago, Michael Church wrote a neat summary of the American social class system, and how the traditional metaphor of “climbing the ladder of social class” is wrong in an important way. There isn’t one single ladder; there are three – each with different values, norms and goals. You have the first, and largest ladder, Labour. Next, you have the “Educated Gentry” ladder that corresponds to what we typically call the Upper Middle Class. And finally, you have the elite ladder. And the remarkable thing about these ladders is how perfectly they correspond to the three-tiered pyramid in The Office, of the losers, clueless, and sociopaths.

  Climbing the labour ladder means making more money. At the bottom are really tough jobs, typically paid hourly, informally, or with tips. Above that there are stable, but modest blue collar jobs; then high-skilled or good Union-protected careers. Finally at the top you find “Labour leadership”, which doesn’t mean being a union boss, but means, “You’ve made it. You own stuff. You drive a new F-150, you have income properties, you enjoy nice things.”

  If you’ve made it to Labour leadership, you are by no means hurting for money. But you have not actually escaped the category of “economic losers”, because the Labour ladder does not create paths to leverage. That is the fundamental difference between how the labour ladder works versus how the elite ladder works. The people on the labour ladder fully understand this. They see the world as it is, with clear eyes, like Stanley, Pam or Darryl – or the one person who actually makes the jump, Ryan – in The Office.

  Skipping the middle ladder for a second, we move to the Elite ladder. The Elite ladder has a lot in common with the Labour ladder: it’s straightforward. You move up by getting more money and more power. The only fundamental difference is that you climb the Labour ladder by working hard, whereas you climb the Elite ladder by acquiring leverage.

  The bottom of this ladder is an entry point – junior Investment Banker roles you can jump into, or founding a startup now also qualifies. The next rung up are the executives who run successful businesses. They are powerful, but nervous. Above them is Old Money: the multigenerational dynasties with power that extends beyond business and into media and politics, like the Bushes and extended Vanderbilts. And finally, at the top of this ladder, are the Barbarians. These are the scariest people in the world.

  The middle ladder works completely differently from the other two. This ladder isn’t about money or power; it’s about being interesting. You climb this ladder by being more educated, and towards the top, by having costly habits and virtues. At the bottom is also a transitional layer: it’s how you get onto this ladder if you weren’t born there, often via Community or 1st generation College. Above that is the upper-middle class Petite Bourgeoisie. Higher up the ladder are “elite creatives”, people with obscure or virtuous-sounding PhDs, notably interesting lives, or Blue Check Marks on Twitter. (They may well earn less money than those below them on the ladder – this ladder isn’t about income.) At the very top of this ladder is an exclusive group: “Cultural leadership”. The litmus test for attaining this group is, “could you write an opinion piece in the New York Times.” Generally speaking, the farther you go up this ladder, the more detached from reality you get. Importantly, this isn’t seen as a problem: it’s actually a virtue, so long as you portray it correctly. Sixty years ago, this group sought refuge and status in the suburbs, explicitly detaching themselves from the reality of dirty, dangerous cities. Now, it’s fashionable to move back downtown, detaching ourselves from the reality of gas-guzzling, chain restaurant normie suburbs. The farther you go into expensive, performative habits (Doing triathlons, eating farm-to-table) and coastal echo chambers (“I don’t know a single person who voted for Trump”; “We should ban cars”), the farther you progress up this ladder.

  On the way up the ladder, you earn social status by doing things that detach you from normie reality. David Brooks wrote a fabulous book on this phenomenon called Bobos In Paradise, about the peaceful merger between the Bourgeois and Bohemian classes that created this strange but durable social tier. These are people that would be mortified to show off a $10,000 watch, but excitedly tell you about their $100,000 kitchen remodel filled with 100-mile diet cookbooks and single-origin Japanese knives, or their 6-month work sabbatical they spent powerlifting. This is a group of people where a Subaru is a higher-status car than a Cadillac, but the highest status car is none. (Or, now, a Tesla.) (…) What’s interesting here isn’t the language of Labour or of the Elites – both of these groups see the world more or less as it is. It’s the language spoken by and to the Educated Gentry. Both reveal the extent to which this group has become detached from normal reality, and also the care taken by others (mostly labour) to manage this detachment carefully. (…) Language is the fundamental reinforcement mechanism of why arbitrarily constructed environments eventually turn you into Michael Scott. The more you have committed to being seen as interesting within your particular area, the more you detach from reality and move into a construct of your own creation. As this evolution takes place, more of your and your peers’ language will become Posturetalk, and more of the language that gets spoken to you by outsiders will become Babytalk. 

As more of the language surrounding you becomes Posturetalk and Babytalk, the more conclusively you will double down on being “serious” about whatever you’re pursuing, as both a defence mechanism and in pursuit of real praise. This drives the cycle forward again, as your values and environment become increasingly defined by doing Triathlons or whatever. Eventually, you become Michael Scott.”

#the office #michael scott #class #lumpenproletariat #bourgeois #petite bourgeois #Aristocracy #marx #marxism #konkin #conger #agorism #agorist class theory

[witchpunkboy]

ATTN: AGORISM IS NOT RIGHT-WING

After seeing Hans-Herman Hoppe in the agorism tag, I feel it’s time to end the “debate”, which is not really a debate but simply intentional ignorance on the part of ancaps.

So I am here to, once again, shut that shit down. With quotes and shit so that people who didn’t understand it the first time.

AGORISM IS LEFT-LIBERTARIAN

A link in which Samuel Edward Konkin III, the originator of agorist philosophy, makes the claim several times: http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/software/konkin-interview.html

“Rothbard decided that we (the original LP radical caucus, who left the LP as the New Libertarian Alliance, and then promptly went Underground to build the Counter-Economy) were, using Marxist terminology, the Ultra-Left Adventurists and Left Sectarians. Some who remained close to him called me the Trotsky of the Movement. So it became natural to refer to us as the Libertarian Left in that context.” -Interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III, Daniel Burton 

“Konkin stands out in his insistence that libertarianism rightly conceived belongs on the radical left wing of the political spectrum. His Movement of the Libertarian Left, founded as a coalition of leftist free marketers, resisted the association of libertarianism with conservatism. Further positioning it on the left, agorism embraces the notion of class war and entails a distinctly libertarian analysis of class struggle and stratification.“ -David S. D’Amato, “Black-Market Activism: Agorism and Samuel Edward Konkin III”

AGORISM IS ANTI-CAPITALIST

“Capitalism is state rule by and for those who own large amounts of capital…” -Samuel Konkin III, “Bad Capitalists Good Entrepreneurs”

“Sometimes the terms ‘free enterprise’ and ‘capitalism’ are used to mean ‘free market’. Capitalism means the ideology (ism) of capital or capitalists. Before Marx came along, the pure free-marketeer Thomas Hodgskin had already used the term capitalism as pejorative; capitalists were trying to use coercion - the State - to restrict the market. Capitalism, then, does not describe a free market but a form of statism [...]” -Samuel Konkin III (again), “An Agorist Primer” (p. 30)

“However, seeking to escape the state’s regulation is not the only goal to our agorist and counter-economic strategy. The endgame is a stateless society where free people are not bound by the force and coercion of the parasitic state and corporate class.“ - Derrick Broze, Manifesto of the Free Humans (p. 20)

AGORISM IS ANTI-HIERARCHY

Where Konkin began: 

“In an agorist society, division of labor and self-respect of each worker-capitalist-entrepreneur will probably eliminate the traditional business organization - especially the corporate hierarchy, an imitation of the State and not the Market.” -Samuel Edward Konkin, New Libertarian Manifesto (p. 27)

“As for the Workers and Peasants, we find them an embarrassing relic from a previous Age at best and look forward to the day that they will die out from lack of market demand“ -Interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III, Daniel Burton

Where others followed: 

“It is true that agorists in general do not fancy “organization, hierarchy, leaders and followers, etc.”, which is a common preference among anarchists of all varieties. ... [T]hey realize that the limited options for a child, i.e. working in a sweat shop or becoming a prostitute, are not the result of the market but of political institutions. The choice in itself may be easy, but the context certainly isn’t. The person making the choice is subjected to political oppression through the unavailability of choices due to political regulation, rule, and coercive institutions.“ -Per Bylund, “Responding to Klein and Rothbard on Agorist Organization”

“Even Konkin couldn’t help but notice the exploitative nature of corporate hierarchy, believing it to be some of the lasting remains of feudalism and that if the individual were truly respected, bosses would slowly become a thing of the past. In the truly freed-market, labor unions would be allowed to operate just as any voluntary association and groups like the IWW show us a way to unionize without appealing to the state for favors.“ - Logan Marie Glitterbomb, “Toward an Agorist-Syndicalist Alliance

Agorism is not “ancap lite”. It is not “anarcho-capitalism” with bitcoin. It is a separate, unique, and well-noted section of left-wing anti-capitalist market anarchism, and it has been from day one.

In essence, if you are a right-wing libertarian claiming the agorist label, and are distressed by all the “left-wing entryism”, they’re not the source of the entryism.

You are.

#agorism #agorist #agorist class theory #agora #anarchism #anarchist #anarchy #Anarcho-Capitalism #anarchocapitalists #ancap #samuel edward konkin #SEK3 #left libertarianism #leftist #leftism

[askalibertarianus]

Partyarchy With Agorism

Travis Hallman, 7/15/2018

Agorism and Partyarchism are both libertarian social philosophies that advocate for all relations between people to be voluntary exchanges. However, they both have very different means. Agorists claim that such a society could be more readily established by employing methods such as:

education

direct action

alternative currencies

entrepreneurship

self sufficiency

civil disobedience

counter-economics (AKA black markets)

The purpose of employing these methods of self-governance is to defund the state until it cannot afford to exist.

Partyarchs pursue a free-society through political parties via campaigning, voting, and holding offices. This includes the vetoing of draconian legislation, as well as passing bills designed to allow for greater freedom.

The debate between these methods has raged for decades, possibly millennia. It is worth considering that there may be no single, conclusive right or wrong path to a free society.

The study or practice of self-governance is very insightful by helping people realize they do not need a government in order to progress in a peaceful manner. Homeschooling is an example of autonomy which teaches parents that government-funded schools are not necessary. Here are a couple of examples, in support of agorism, that teach how civil disobedience and counter-economics can effectively cause politicians to remove laws:

According to Civil Disobedience Weekly, “Gandhi led the Salt March in 1930, in order to eliminate the Salt Tax, a tax on salt, which harmed India’s poor population. The Salt Tax was beneficial to the British as they financed subjugation of India by the Salt Tax. If having India as a colony was no longer profitable for the British, the Indians thought they would eventually leave. This did end up happening, because after World War II, the British did not want to stay. They did not want to raise taxes from their own people for a war against India, and they did not want to spend their money on a war.”

According to Freedom Leaf, “Large gatherings of pot smokers in Colorado each year on 4/20 signaled the public groundswell of support for legalization. Major events that include public smoking, like Seattle Hempfest and the Boston Freedom Rally, have served as the main vehicles for political reform.”

However, is self-governance the only path to a free society? The laws would not have been removed if the politicians didn’t consent to removing them.

Here are a few examples of counter-economics that have been practiced around the world:

According to The New Libertarian Manifesto on page 20 (written in 1983):

“In the Soviet Union, a bastion of arch-statism and a nearly totally collapsed ‘official’ economy, a giant black market provides the Russians, Armenian, Ukrainian and others with everything from food to television repair to official papers and favors from the ruling class. As the Guardian Weekly reports, Burma is almost a total black market with the government reduced to an army, police, and a few strutting politicians. In varying degrees, this is true of nearly all the Second and Third Worlds.

Italy, for example, has a ‘problem’ of a large part of its civil services which works officially from 7 A.M. to 2 P.M. working unofficially at various jobs the rest of the day earning ‘black’ money.

The Netherlands has a large black market in housing because of the high regulation of this industry. Denmark has a tax evasion movement so large that those in it seduced to politics have formed the second largest party. .. Currency controls are evaded rampantly; in France, for example, everyone is assumed to have a large gold stash and trips to Switzerland for more than touring and skiing are commonplace.

..

According to the American Internal Revenue Service, at least twenty million people belong in the ‘underground economy’ of tax evaders using cash to avoid detections of transactions or barter exchange. Millions keep money in gold or in foreign accounts to avoid the hidden taxation of inflation. Millions of ‘illegal aliens’ are employed, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Millions more deal or consume marijuana and other prescribed drugs, including laetrile and forbidden medical material.

And there are all the practitioners of ‘victimless crimes.’ Besides drug use, there are prostitution, pornography, bootlegging, false identification papers, gambling, and proscribed sexual conduct between consenting adults.

..

But it doesn’t stop here. Since the 55 mph speed limit enacted federally in the U.S., most Americans have become counter-economic drivers. The trucking industry has developed CB communications to evade state enforcement of regulations. For independents who can make four runs at 75 mph rather than three runs at 55 mph, counter-economic driving is a question of survival.

The ancient custom of smuggling thrives today from boatloads of marijuana and foreign appliances with high tariffs and truckloads of people from less- developed countries to the tourists stashing a little extra in their luggage and not reporting to customs agents.”

Citizens are not directly culpable for the system in place; however, how do agorists justify reconciling their means to a free society with traveling on government-funded roads or using federal reserve notes for trading or providing commonwealth government identifiers (such as a social security number and a zip code) to attain a job? Is it possible, at all, to be a pure agorist in the United States of America? If an agorist is anything less than pure then is it still self governance?

Agorists only support engaging in political activity as a means to educate voters about the unnecessity of voting. According to The New Libertarian Manifesto on page 28 (written in 1983), “The best form of organization is a Libertarian Alliance in which you steer the members from political activity (where they have blindly gone seeking relief from oppression) and focus on education, publicity, recruitment and perhaps some anti-political campaigning (i.e. ‘Vote For Nobody,’ ‘None of the Above’, ‘Boycott the Ballot,’ ‘Don’t Vote, It Only Encourages Them!’ etc.) to publicize the libertarian Alternative.”

According to The American, “Only 1.3 percent of the total population—38,818 people—cast ballots in the first presidential election.” Yet, a ruling class was still created. How do agorists intend to get 100% of the population to refrain from voting? This task is seemingly impossible considering how many citizens want a voice in the political arena. What are some large/major efforts taken by agorists to educate the public about the benefits of a free society? Do agorists voluntarily create collectives to educate others on the benefits of a free society? Please visit the bottom of this article to view a list of agorists.

The entirety of the Libertarian Party is a large/major effort taken by partyarchs collectivizing to educate the public about the benefits of a free society. Partyarchs seem to be championing this field of educating others. Please visit the bottom of this article to view a list of partyarchs.

The following questions are intended to challenge the philosophical means of agorists:

If offered, would you accept the opportunity to present the benefits of a free society on a government funded tv channel?

Since aggression is ethically justified as self-defense and voting for statists causes aggression toward yourself and/or others; then would voting for partyarchs be self-defense?

Is agorism appealing to minarchists, classical liberals, right-anarchists, and other interpretations of the non-aggression principle?

The following questions are intended to challenge the philosophical means of partyarchs:

Would you not engage in profitable civil disobedience and/or counter-economics if you were presented with an opportunity?

How do you intend to defund and dismantle the state if everyone exclusively engages in the white market?

If elected, would you resort to agorist means if the state resisted your legislation creating a free society?

Are the means from each social philosophy so different that the two cannot work together toward a voluntary society? Seemingly, everyone engages in some amount of agorism, whether paying the least amount possible in taxes, bartering (without payment of taxes), civil disobedience (such as consuming cannabis), gardening, or something entirely different. This includes agorists, partyarchs, and everyone else. According to The New Libertarian Manifesto on page 21 (written in 1983), “To some extent, then, everybody is a counter-economist! And this is predictable from libertarian theory. Nearly every aspect of human action has statist legislation, prohibiting, regulating or controlling it.”

The New Libertarian Manifesto (written in 1983) on pages 28 – 31 describes the transition from a statist society to a free society using agorist means; beginning with phase 0 and ending at phase 4. The author describes part of phase 3 in the following manner, “Wars and rampant inflation with depressions and crack-ups become perpetual as the State attempts to redeem its authority.” This statement begs to ask the question, “Would the state initiate aggressive wars if the state consists predominantly of partyarchs or would the partyarchs simply allow for a free society (considering that’s also the end goal of partyarchs)?”

Agorism “vs” partyarchism is a false dichotomy. The two are not competitive in reality; whereas, partyarchism with agorism would be cooperative and compatible. At minimum, the supporters of either philosophical means can work together to educate others about the benefits of a free society.

Consistencies offer legitimacy to any philosophy. As written in The New Libertarian Manifesto on page 3 (written in 1983), “Consistency of ends, of means, of ends and means.” Agorists claim that since there would be no political arena in the end then engaging in a political arena as a means would be inconsistent. However, the political arena is aggressive so using aggression as defense would be justified ethically. This remains consistent with the means and end because aggression (unfortunately) will always occur; so defensively using aggression as a means would not be inconsistent with the end. Here is a short video detailing how aggression would be resolved in a free society.

According to Lysander Spooner, “In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use[s] the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self- defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot — which is a mere substitute for a bullet — because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.”

Here is a long list of individual agorists educating others about the benefits of a free society: Larken Rose, Patrick Smith, Peter Kallman, James Corbett, Derrick Broze, J. Neil Schulman, Wally Conger, Gary Greenberg, and very few more.

Here is a short list of partyarchs educating others about the benefits of a free society:Adam Kokesh, Darryl Perry, Mary J. Ruwart, Arvin Vohra, John McAfee, Will Coley, Craig Bowden, Caryn Ann Harlos, and very many more. *Disclaimer: the partyarchs on this list have engaged in the political arena with serious intentions of using their elected political positions to work toward a free society and may or may not have engaged or supported agorist means too.

In liberty,

-Travis Hallman

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The author’s views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the entire Ask A Libertarian Team or its followers.

#agorism #election #vote #askalibertarian #libertarianism #party #Libertarian Party

[edwad]

agorist class theory is hilariously bad to me but like sure that's newer to me and somewhat intriguing. i'd rather talk about that then debate another run of the mill ancap about the same shit as always

[jeffnyzio]

“Konkin Was More Rothbardian Than Rothbard” with Wally Conger (LUA Podcast #40)

“Konkin Was More Rothbardian Than Rothbard” with Wally Conger (LUA Podcast #40)

By Liberty Under Attack

In this episode of Liberty Under Attack Radio, I’m joined by libertarian community old hand, Wally Conger. We start by going through his history within libertarianism, the bustling community in Los Angeles from the 1960s-1990s, his “friendship” with Samuel Konkin, Agorist Class Theory, and both wonder how political crusading libertarians haven’t learned their damn…

View On WordPress

[utopiumblog]

Give my bro Sal the Agorist a listen guys!

#SoundCloud #music #Sal Mayweather #logic #revisionism #counter-economics #politics #podcast

[miochimochi]

For better or for worse, the ext entry of The Self as a Whole is in the queue. It's an attempt at a class theory, and admittedly it's rough, but multiple eyes and multiple minds can be put together to hopefully figure out the theory and build it up to be a more viable theory with an extensive class conflict analysis. Doubt it will be a very revolutionary theory, it may reach a few inquisitive and like minded souls, but the practice of building a class theory is itself interesting and can be enlightening.

#anarchism #anarchy #market anarchism #agorism #agora #agorist class theory #class theory #class analysis #class war #class

[witchpunkboy]

Konkin says I can be anticapitalist and have a for-crypto black market business in my basement, so... win win?

#agorism #agorist #agorist class theory #anarchism #anarchist #sek3 #samuel edward konkin #konkin #anarchy

[witchpunkboy]

It’s time for a new form of class warfare.

#agorism #agorist #anarchist #anarchism #class warfare #class theory #agorist class theory

[nicklloydnow]

“For Konkin, a truly libertarian society would be Agorist – “libertarian in theory and free-market in practice”. This society would include a respect for justly acquired property, voluntary cooperation between entrepreneurs and producers, and replacing all of the State’s “services” with private competition among individuals and collectives.

“Libertarian analysis shows us that the State is responsible for any damage to innocents it alleges the ‘selfish tax-evader’ has incurred; and the ‘services’ the State ‘provides’ us are illusory. But even so, there must be more than lonely resistance cleverly concealed or ‘dropping out?’ If a political party or revolutionary army is inappropriate and self-defeating for libertarian goals, what collective action works? The answer is agorism.” (3)

The goal of Agorism is to replace all non-consensual, coercive relationships with voluntary relationships based on mutual benefit via entrepreneurship in the black and grey markets. This shuffling of “large collections of humanity from statist society to the agora” was “true revolutionary activity”. According to Konkin, Agorists should not launch “attacks” on the State. “We are strictly defensive,” Konkin wrote in An Agorist Primer, his follow-up to The New Libertarian Manifesto.

Further, Konkin described an agorist as “one who lives counter-economically without guilt for his or her heroic, day-to-day actions, with the old libertarian morality of never violating another’s person or property”. The philosophy stresses the importance of taking action. “An agorist is one who lives agorism. Accept no counterfeits. There are agorists “trying to live up to it.” There are, of course, liars who will claim to be anything. As Yoda said so succinctly, ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try.’ That’s Agorism.” (4)

If Agorism is Konkin’s premier philosophical contribution, his recognition of Counter-Economics as the path towards Agorism is equally important. The term Counter-Economics can be attributed to the time and period in which Konkin developed his ideas. “Counter-Culture was a popular phrase, the only lasting victory of the “hippies.” Counter-Economics implied that the “revolution wasn’t finished” and that the Economic System needed to undergo the same up-ending as the Culture had,” Konkin wrote.

As defined above, the black and grey markets are part of the Counter-Economy, which Konkin defined as “All (non-coercive) human action committed in defiance of the State”. In line with libertarian principles of non-aggression, Konkin labels initiatory violence in the form of theft or murder as the “red market”, the one type of activity that is shunned in his counter-economy.

(...)

Konkin envisioned a world of decentralized, peer to peer communities consciously and voluntarily doing business in the counter-economy as a means towards ending the State and liberating the people. The range of (and opportunity for) counter-economic activity has only increased with the expansion of the internet and decentralized technology like crypto-currencies. Konkin discussed various forms of counter-economic activity including, using cash to avoid detection, barter, investing in precious metals, undocumented employment, use of illicit and illegal drugs and medicines, prostitution, bootlegging, gambling, weapons dealing, or simply providing a service while accepting payment in non-statist currencies.

The possibilities are essentially endless and should be welcomed by all radicals who are seeking alternatives to Statism and the status-quo. Any individual or collective who recognizes the economic monopoly that is maintained by continued use of the Federal Reserve Note (dollar) should be supportive of counter-economic measures and investing in creating alternatives. Whether your idea of economic freedom is collective ownership or individualist in nature, Agorism offers an opportunity for communes, mutual banks, time stores, and marketplaces based in the counter-economy. This will allow all non-statist counter-economic ventures to cooperate and compete in the pursuit of a more free society. As Nick Ford has noted, there is opportunity for an Agorist-Syndicalist alliance, and in our first book, John Vibes and I propose the creation of an Agorist-Mutualist alliance. Quite simply, if you want to abolish the State and the privileged class who benefit from its existence, create alternatives to the current paradigm and outgrow the archaic institutions of yesterday.”

#konkin #agorism #anarchy #counter-economics #liberty #libertarianism #Hans-Hermann Hoppe #natural order

[witchpunkboy]

Because the “agorism” tag on Tumblr isn’t exactly stunning in terms of content, here’s an article for those just jumping in (and to the ancaps who believe buying bitcoin makes them an agorist) explaining what differentiates anarcho-capitalism and agorism.

Key points of the article for those who want to argue with the content before reading it:

Agorists embrace class theory. While agorist class theory diverges from marxist class theory on several key points, it fully embraces class warfare and does not attempt to claim everyone is equally oppressed by the government, least of all the capitalist. This leads right into the next point.

Agorists see entrepreneurs as separate from capitalists. Agorist theory fully recognizes that the majority of capitalists, i.e. holders of capital, directly utilize the state to protect said capital and work the market in their favor. Rather than propping them up, agorism sees these as the enemy, stifling the innovative tendencies of the working class. The term entrepreneur, in agorist theory, refers to the innovator and those with innovative spirit, and not simply whomever holds most capital in the company.

Agorism is anti-capitalism. As you may have guessed by previous points, SEK3 was anti-capitalist, and agorism is anti-capitalism. Full stop. "Capitalism means the ideology (ism) of capital or capitalists,” SEK3 wrote. “Before Marx came along, the pure free-marketeer Thomas Hodgskin had already used the term capitalism as a pejorative; capitalists were trying to use coercion — the State — to restrict the market. Capitalism, then, does not describe a free market but a form of statism, like communism. Free enterprise can only exist in a free market.”

Our end goal is not hyper-capitalism, but a market where each individual is innovator and owner and either trades or does not trade as they please.

Which, of course, leads to the last point.

Agorism favors workers. Agorists doesn’t just suggest the abolition of the working class as an end-goal - we all-out fight for it. From early association with the IWW to actively embracing organizational aspects of anarcho-syndicalism to the promotion of a genuinely peer-to-peer free society, agorism is designed to be a pro-working class ideology. SEK3 actively considered the employer-employee relationship to be a state construct.

When talking about the working class, he writes that it agorists see it as “an embarrassing relic from a previous Age at best and look forward to the day that they will die out from lack of market demand”.

Certainly agorism is a market-focused ideology. It wishes to abolish the capitalist class because it is tied to the state, which it sees as separate from the market. It wishes to abolish the working class because it sees its existence as due to the state, which again is separate from the market. But even with its aggressively market focus, ultimately agorism is even more aggressively a left-wing and anti-capitalist ideology, and not synonymous with anarcho-capitalism.

#agorism #anarcho-capitalism #agorist #counter-economics