Classical Liberal
The difference between ancap and agorism is quite simple. Ancap is a state of society in which institutionalized coercion is absent, while agorism is a strategy for achieving ancap. In one of my early posts “Ancap or Minarchism?” I called this method counter-cultural, as opposed to political, but I am ready to agree that the term is subpar and a mouthful; in the future, I will use the word “agorism” specifically.
Agorism assumes that the only effective strategy for achieving ancap is direct action. If you want ancap, live according to ancap; do not try to bargain with the state or use state-approved mechanisms for interacting with the state, because this practice, which is questionable in terms of protecting rights, strengthens those very mechanisms and the state along with them.
Agorism is the black market, private education, crypto-economics, horizontal ties, and voluntary mutual aid. As is easy to see, in recent years, agorists have achieved considerable success in developing the necessary infrastructure and do not plan to stop.
However, it is also easy to see that the greatest intellectual contribution to the development of agorist mechanisms is still made by people living in relatively free states, while agorists in somewhere like China keep quiet as mice. Thus, for agorism to emerge as an ideological direction and develop steadily, rather than representing spontaneous, easily suppressed acts of defiance against violence, a certain basic level of political and economic freedoms is necessary, and this level is achieved precisely by political methods.
On the other hand, for example, the economic transformation from a planned to a market economy in Russia happened largely thanks to the black market that had already developed in the late Soviet Union; without it, private property would have had to be created from absolute scratch, which would have been far more difficult.
Finally, I will note that for a market to emerge, a certain minimum level of trust in society is required, without which the costs of ensuring security simply eat up all the benefits of most transactions, making market relations marginal, while subsistence farming and various forms of coercion come to the fore. The best mechanism for establishing trust is the successful experience of joint activity. And here, political activity, some form of cooperative economics, charity, and even sports competitions or mass celebrations are equally suitable.
So both agorism and political libertarianism successfully work toward the same goal. The more political rights there are relative to underdeveloped economic rights, the more relevant agorism becomes. The more economic rights there are relative to underdeveloped political rights, the more relevant political activity becomes, although it may also take on very peculiar forms—which is no surprise if parties are not registered and not included in ballots. And in a situation where there are neither political nor economic rights, I’m sorry, but the most direct path is flight from this hell, or an armed uprising.
