Ain’t this the million dollar question!
The state is a parasite which grows until it kills its host organism. We view this power-based model of organization as ultimately doomed to collapse under its own weight leaving us regular folk wondering what to do now.
There are many strategies market anarchists propose to help hasten the state’s demise and create a more wholesome world.
Generally market anarchists are very dubious of electoral politics. Some, especially those who identify as voluntaryists, view participation in the existing political structure as inherently immoral and counterproductive. Their motto “if one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself,” means that by participating in an illegitimate political order one is implicitly granting it the moral authority to exist. However, many market anarchists are grateful for the educational effect that political campaigns hold. Most Americans think about politics in the context of elections. It is a language and tradition which they understand. Ron Paul will probably never be president nor will substantial change come through the rigged American political project, but his 2008 campaign probably created more market anarchists than any other single action in American history.
As far as civil disobedience goes, the Free State Project participants in New Hampshire are certainly the leaders. The objective of civil disobedience is to force the state’s hand into treating you with its absurd power, to show the average person some great injustice being levied against just people. These images can be very powerful. If one has the courage to behave in this way, by all means, one is (hopefully) helping to change public opinion; so long as you look like a victim and not a jerk. Be wise and make sure one is getting mileage out of the financial, legal and personal woes which are sure to follow.
Agorism is another method of disobedience market anarchists use to subvert and starve the state. It is the practice of counter-economics: keeping one’s transactions primarily in the black and gray markets in order to avoid taxation which is wasteful and funds atrocities as well as to avoid the regulations which allows big companies to muscle out small producers.
Agorist Market Theory
Left-libertarians also support anti-state labor struggle by which working class people struggle for better conditions and treatment at their place of employment through organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World. We view this as a normal part of the market and as the process by which wages are discovered, no different from entrepreneurs bartering for any other good or service. More preferable when possible is for laborers to start their own enterprises in co-ops and collectives in an effort to “build the new society within the shell of the old,” as the old wobblie expression goes.
Our mission at the Center for a Stateless Society is primarily educational.
We want people to know why we are market anarchists and why we think it is worthwhile to spend time and labor on this project. We expend the bulk of our energy communicating to the public at large the philosophy, economics and politics of market anarchism.
We encourage people to start forming relationships and social structures which actively reflect their values. If the state were to collapse and no better idea were widespread enough to replace it, people will seek to try again at statism rather than to participate as equals on a local level. We need civil associations strong enough to provide a glimmer of a way out of the rubble; to outperform and render unnecessary the heavy hand of statism which we have all experienced.
Anarchy is about creation, about actively building a peaceful and non-exploitative world; not any sort of fetish for destructive chaos as we are pejoratively painted.
Write, teach, learn, make art, build vibrant and beautiful communities which actively reflect one’s values and spread our ideas and institutions the world over. Show everyone there is a market anarchist alternative free and delightful; show them it’s possible!