Is agorism compatible with anarchism?

[BillyWitchDr.]

Is Samuel Konkin's theory compatible with anarchism? In practice true agorists are not part of the wage system, some homestead abandoned land, both "private" and "public" (guerilla gardeners), they participate in a non-hierarchical market as well as cooperate with each other.

You can't call them capitalists, they don't have people working under them, and they undermine both capitalism and the state.

Now I am talking about real agorists not ancaps that avoid taxes here and there but otherwise have a white market job.

[thelastindividual]

[Noor]

I like agorism less and less these days overall.

The left-Rothbardian theoretical basis for agorism is mostly nonsense, but agorist strategies aren't that bad when you work with worker cooperatives in the black market. The more anti-state capitalistic agorists will advocate the most hierarchical and propertarian-based business structures to take over, but I do believe Konkin originally had an idea of an entrepreneur class replacing the bourgeoisie/proletariat. (Rothbard was a huge critic of Konkin and called the latter out on being anti-politics and anti-hierarchy.) And many agorists like to use Marx's class theory and simply replace 'capitalism' with 'government' and such, but most agorists, even the ones that diverge from hard ancappy beliefs, are propertarian. So I'd need a heavily modified version of it.

Agorism and more-syndicalist-style strategies do have one thing in common-- taking what is yours from the oppressors. I can somewhat see how agorism would be useless for the non-market anarchists, though.

[patrickhenry]

Billy-If you think landlordism,interest,pp and private defense forces are anarchist. Please read the fine print on the agorism label If you take all the ancap shit out of agorism then you have Tucker's individualism....so why have agorism?

[shawnpwilbur]

If you look at Konkin's "New Libertarian Manifesto," it's pretty clear that agorism is first of all a transitional strategy, which Konkin insisted was open to revision to deal with any inconsistencies with regard to the application of the non-aggression principle. Konkin himself, it seems to me, was committed to attempting to wring the most practical anarchistic implications out of Mises, Lefevre, Rothbard, etc. But he was genuinely welcoming to a pretty wide range of positions, and insisted that the consistently working out of libertarian principles trumped agorist dogma. "Everyone here disagrees." After his death, agorism split between those who wanted to stick close to "the plan" and those who saw common cause with a considerably broader segment of the anarchist movement. The second camp, represent by people like Brad Spangler, seem headed in the right directions.

The agorist end-state society might look a lot like the one partially described by Proudhon in "The Theory of Property," with things hovering close to anarchy as a result of fairly constant social struggle over things like individual property and the tendency of institutions to ossify into authoritarian forms. Or the nerdy, science-fiction aesthetic of the whole thing might well push things in slightly different directions. I look at agorism the way I looked at things like the Love and Rage Federation, which sure weren't my preferred flavor of anarchism, but might well have led to some sort of free society.

Issues like private property, private defense, etc., have been dealt with at great length in the tradition. There is no problem distinguishing between landlordism and rent as a service, between authoritarian and anti-authoritarian forms of private defense, between remuneration for labor between social equals and the capitalist wage-relation. The thorniest problems, like individual property, are probably amenable to solution by consistent application of propertarian theory. (And those solutions are likely to look a lot like communism.) Agorism, unlike some forms of anarchism, has a basic, principled commitment to improving itself by eliminating contradictions, so consistent agorists should be open to participation in the problem-solving process.

Not, of course, that we're likely to pursue a course of real mutual understanding and problem-solving, but...

[BillyWitchDr.]

Billy-If you think landlordism,interest,pp and private defense forces are anarchist. Please read the fine print on the agorism label If you take all the ancap shit out of agorism then you have Tucker's individualism....so why have agorism?

Landlordism, interest? This has little to nothing to do with agorism. Agorists do not have to be propertarian and most practicing agorists don't put much stock into the defense agencies as Konkin envisioned them.

Yes I am playing devils advocate, but I do think the one thing the agorist have right is that they are trying to minimize the funding of the state.

[patrickhenry]

Yes I am playing devils advocate, but I do think the one thing the agorist have right is that they are trying to minimize the funding of the state.

They are? I think I only know of two agorists..Konkin and Spangler trying to minimize funding to the state? Your talking in theory correct? Because I don't see agorists doing much of anything in the real world beside hypothesizing

[anarchoPhil]

one person characterized agorism as a bunch of geeks trying to sell computer services to each other online

[patrickhenry]

I'm not hating on agorists but after reading sek3 his wording turns someone like me off. statements like "liquidation of the proletariat" workers and peseants are ambarrassing. their "strict rothbardians" workers and peseants "are relics hoping to die off" also he was borderline antisemetic. I know agorists will say that's not what he meant but saying that to a syndicalist turns me off. any libsoc or libcom would be turned off by those statements.

[thelastindividual]

Well Patrick despite those statements perhaps it would be best to Remember the words of Bakunin -

I do not think that I need show that for the International to be a real power, it must be able to organize within its ranks the immense majority of the proletariat of Europe, of America, of all lands. But what political or philosophic program can rally to its banner all these millions? Only a program which is very general, – hence vague and indefinite, for every theoretical definition necessarily involves elimination and in practice exclusion from membership.

I think we need to look beyond debates about how groups use their terms and start looking at the actual substance of what they're saying. We are after all as anarchists a very small minority and we need all the allies we can get.

I found an agorist on a gaming website and had a discussion with him. One of the things he said that might be of interest -

While it's true I would not abolish wages absolutely per se (this cannot be done without violence, which I abhor), if the Agora were implemented tomorrow, Wal-mart, Microsoft, McDonald's and the like would all be taken over by the employees in the name of just property rights. I hope that's worth something.

While the fact that he believes Microsoft, Mcdonalds and Wal-mart would even exist is a bit of a turn off I'm sure we can agree this is a step up from the standard ancap 'Ev1l5 50cialIsTs steeliN m4h monEez'.

[patrickhenry]

i'm sure many europeans said the same thing in regards to "terms" with the term "the jewish question" look where that got us. wording is stronger then you imagine my friend. maybe agorism is a step up for some? for myself? its a 10 ft fall.

[thelastindividual]

i'm sure many europeans said the same thing in regards to "terms" with the term "the jewish question" look where that got us. wording is stronger then you imagine my friend. maybe agorism is a step up for some? for myself? its a 10 ft fall.

Patrick to a large portion of people in the US 'Socialism' means a totalitarian dictatorship. Look, no one's saying that you actually have to become an agorist or even take on board any of their ideas, just that you take them at least semi-seriously as a movement of the anti-authoritarian left.

[patrickhenry]

I do take them seriously. I take ancaps seriously. I just think agorists are more radical ancaps. I could live in everthing from a ancom society to a mutualist one. I'm pretty open minded. I havnt seen a agorist arguement that would make me say " I could tolerate that"

[Noor]

Well, Konkin did view himself as "more Rothbardian than Rothbard" and there was a split between Konkin and Rothbard. (Here's Rothbard's view-- it's pretty full of defenses of hierarchy and wage labor.)

This is Konkin’s astonishing view that working for wages is somehow non-market or anti-libertarian, and would disappear in a free society. Konkin claims to be an Austrian free-market economist, and how he can say that a voluntary sale of one’s labor for money is somehow illegitimate or unlibertarian passeth understanding.

That article gives you some idea of what Konkin was for, and he appears to be one of the first people that moved beyond ancap to more leftist/mutualist ideas.

[BillyWitchDr.]

I'm not hating on agorists but after reading sek3 his wording turns someone like me off. statements like "liquidation of the proletariat" workers and peseants are ambarrassing. their "strict rothbardians" workers and peseants "are relics hoping to die off" also he was borderline antisemetic. I know agorists will say that's not what he meant but saying that to a syndicalist turns me off. any libsoc or libcom would be turned off by those statements.

Bakunin? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakunin#Anti-semitism
Proudhon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Jos ... ged_racism