Тег: Konkin

40 years ago, SEK3 wrote in the New Libertarian Manifesto that California is ahead of the entire planet in the transition to libertarianism and agorism.

Right now we observe that California is a top statist socialist state in the USA. How did it happen?

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I avoided this question for quite a while because I didn’t understand how to provide a detailed answer without falling into a tedious chronicle, which is not so much useless as it is meaningless on its own. Every tax increase and every tightening of regulations had its own unique reason, and digging into them is not the level of a popular channel.

To put it very briefly, California became “Commifornia” because its voters wanted it. It remains in this status now largely despite the will of the voters, but that is usually how socialism works: people try this drug because it is trendy and advertised everywhere, and then it turns out that it is easier to die than to get off it; thus California (as a system of effective resource management for the territory to improve the territory in the interests of its residents) is dying.

It seems possible to get off this drug—the example of Thatcher’s Britain shows this. But relapses are also extremely likely, as shown by the example of modern Britain. Anyway, let us leave the medical metaphors and the abuse of holistic constructs alone. I would like to draw attention to another point.

Generally speaking, Konkin did predict the crisis of the state, because if people had the opportunity to use political methods for the constant and irreversible reduction of state interference, there would be no need for agorism. At the same time, Californian crypto-anarchists indeed seriously pushed humanity toward the implementation of useful agoric technologies, so Konkin’s notion that California would play an important role in the struggle was also justified to some extent.

Thanks to open borders between states, many agorists and libertarians found it easier to bail out to tiny New Hampshire rather than try to turn the tide in massive California; therefore, those who wish to focus on business and legal politics rather than survival naturally leave the leftists alone with the governments they chose, heading where their efforts will bring more benefit. For some reason, Konkin warned against such tactics as a kind of simple and wrong solution, calling it anarcho-Zionism. On the other hand, he also predicted the emergence of certain agoric ghettos where people could effectively resist the state’s attempts to regulate them into oblivion, thanks to the fact that their concentration there would be higher, making it difficult for hostile agents.

In short, Konkin was hardly concerned with the fate of a specific state that was one way or another in the hands of statists, and nitpicking that his territory is not the current locomotive of agorism is like nitpicking Ayn Rand for the absence of Rearden Metal based on an iron-copper alloy in our lives.

Apology for Agorism

One often reads that agorism not only fails to help abolish the state but actually directly harms the libertarian movement. The main argument against agorism boils down to the claim that the black market in no way contributes to the disappearance of the state. On the contrary, by reducing the share of legally employed people, the growing black market increases the tax burden on the white market, as well as the number and severity of various inspections. Thus, the competitiveness of the state’s economy declines, people become impoverished, and the poor are prone to socialist views. Therefore, it is respect for the law and civilized political activity that allow for gradual movement toward freedom, while all forms of rebellion only give the state excuses to tighten the screws.

To everyone deeply interested in this issue, I would recommend reading Konkin’s “New Libertarian Manifesto”, as well as the discussion between Konkin and Rothbard regarding this manifesto. And for symmetry, it is worth looking at Rothbard’s “For a New Liberty”, which serves as the manifesto of the Libertarian Party of the USA—although the latter work is significantly more voluminous than the first two.

Both sides presented various interesting arguments in their discussion, which took place in the early eighties of the last century. However, nearly forty years have passed since then, and we can see what has changed in the USA.

The Libertarian Party continues to slowly increase its electoral support, received nearly 5% of the voters’ votes in the 2016 presidential election, and has a few small electoral victories. However, the trend of the USA turning into a socialist state has not been broken; there is incredible monetary emission and an increase in national debt, and the powers of intelligence services are expanding—in short, the state is advancing in full force.

Meanwhile, agorists have invented Bitcoin, are operating full-throttle in the darknet, printing weapons on 3D printers, and mastering biohacking. At the intersection with panarchists, they are launching Bitnation.

And finally, there is the phenomenon of New Hampshire, where agorists and supporters of political methods combined their efforts, even if without much concern for coordinating their actions. Political activists there are actively elected to legislative bodies and engage in deregulation. Meanwhile, agorists organize direct action campaigns to demonstratively violate idiotic laws—and this also sparks public campaigns for their repeal. It is precisely the simultaneous action on two fronts that led to New Hampshire becoming the freest of all fifty states.

A similar tactic is used by the Georgian Girchi party. On one hand, it is a political party; it participates in elections and is ostensibly a legal subject of politics. On the other hand, it is a gang of hardcore agorists who openly grew marijuana right in their central office and then publicly sold joints in the square in the presence of the police. This led to the legalization of marijuana in Georgia. Now they have organized a brothel in their central office—everything points to the fact that sex work will soon be legalized in the country as well. Thus, we see that coordinated actions of politicians and agorists yield an even more effective result than if they worked separately.

Meanwhile, agorism by itself simply slowly delegitimizes the state and increases the share of people who have, more or less, slipped from under its short-sighted eye. And the political process by itself helps broader masses learn the word “libertarianism.” Both are very useful, but neither compares in effect to the joint application of these two recipes—agorism and minarchism. And we have barely seen the implementation of panarchist developments, with their functional contractual jurisdictions. I suspect that an offensive on three fronts at once would be even more effective.

In Russia over the last year, the positions of the Libertarian Party have strengthened quite significantly. I would like the agorists not to lag behind; otherwise, it will be like in Ukraine, whereas I would prefer it to be like in Georgia. The Russian Libertarian Party has its own Rothbard—Mikhail Svetov. All that is left is to find its own Konkin.

the father of world agorism