Philosophical Considerations If we had the luxury of sticking to the philosophical terrain, the question of distinguishing anarchy and democracy would, it seems to me, pose very few problems. Certainly, it would be unlikely to pose the persistent, seemingly intractable problems that it does at present. Anarchy describes the absence of rule, while democracy describes…

This piece is the fourth essay in the June C4SS Mutual Exchange Symposium: “Anarchy and Democracy.” Democracy is a word that evokes an array of affective responses depending on time, place, and people involved. For the Patriot movement, democracy stimulates a constellation of ideals, values, and principles.

This piece is the third essay in the June C4SS Mutual Exchange Symposium: “Anarchy and Democracy.” Democracy: the universal war cry of justice. We’re told by the left — both moderate and radical — that all socio-political problems almost always arise from a pure lack of democracy.

This piece is the second essay in the June C4SS Mutual Exchange Symposium: “Anarchy and Democracy.” “Democracy” and “anarchism” are broad, vague, and hotly contested terms. Even if we stick to specific definitions, there are still arguments about what these definitions mean in practice.

This piece is the opening essay in the June C4SS Mutual Exchange Symposium: “Anarchy and Democracy.” Fighting over the definitions of words can sometimes seem like a futile and irrelevant undertaking. However, it’s important to note that whatever language gets standardized in our communities shapes what we can talk and think about.

Mutual Exchange is the Center for a Stateless Society’s effort to achieve mutual understanding through dialogue. Following one of the most divisive Presidential elections in recent American history and a dangerous victor’s contested ascension to power, the political climate is one of intense ideological strife and disagreement.

While it is true that syndicalism and illegalism can diverge from and even sometimes butt heads with agorism, there seems to be much use in such alliances. It was within this spirit that Nathan Goodman offered critiques of each possible tactic and alliance and while some of the points speak for themselves, others require some…

Nathan Goodman does a great service by offering critiques to the Agorist, Illegalist, and Syndicalist framework. Where he succeeds in uncovering important questions for practitioners of these schools of thought, he may fail for lack of imagination or direct experience. As someone who identifies as an Agorist or Counter-Economist and practices the philosophy on a…

I: Does Agorism Require Intent? Nathan Goodman has recently published a great piece on some of the drawbacks and potentials  of agorism, direct action and trying to synthesize agorism with illegalism or syndicalism. In this piece I’ll address a few of his general arguments and then move to address his specific points about agora-syndicalism. In…

I am generally favorable to agorism, direct action, and other anarchist strategies that emphasize building the new world in the shell of the old. However, I recognize that there are no panaceas. All strategies have costs and benefits, and strategies for social change may have serious pitfalls and unintended consequences. This essay employs some basic…

The goal of this essay is three-fold. First, I will identify the key concepts which outline the philosophy of Agorism and the strategy of Counter-Economics, as outlined by Samuel E. Konkin III in The New Libertarian Manifesto and An Agorist Primer. Second, I will illustrate how radicals of all stripes can utilize the strategy of…

Modern markets are fundamentally unfree. Most libertarians and anarchists realise this, and see that centuries of systemic state intervention have created infrastructures that are wasteful, coercive and destructive. The majority of capitalist markets, rather than developing through spontaneous order, are in fact borne out these infrastructures, growing as deformed appendages that have some elements of…

Utilizing markets to combat unethical business practices is a long tradition amongst activists from various ideologies. Whereas agorism seeks to combat cronyist practices of utilizing corporate welfare, tax breaks, lobbying, intellectual property laws, and other special government granted privileges to maintain economic status and even monopoly over certain products or ideas as well as other…

Karl Marx considered the lumpenproletariat to be the segment of the working class with the least revolutionary potential and in fact went as far as to deem them as potentially counter-revolutionary. However, this class of  “beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry,…

Marginalized people are often excluded from the formal economy. This exclusion can be driven through state interventions, such as occupational licensing laws, that erect barriers to entry. This can be coupled with discrimination by employers, barriers to accessing education, and other social factors that impede success in the formal labor market. This leads to transgender…

“Konkin’s entire theory speaks only to the interests and concerns of the marginal classes who are self-employed. The great bulk of the people are full-time wage workers; they are people with steady jobs. Konkinism has nothing whatsoever to say to these people. To adopt Konkin’s strategy, then, would on this ground alone, serve up as…

The goal of this essay is to examine where the counter-economy and the “Agorist movement” is in relation to Samuel E. Konkin III’s hypothesis of a progression from Statism to Agorism in four phases. Readers who are new to the philosophy of Agorism and the practice of counter-economics are likely better served by reading The…

Organizing a Counter-Economic General Strike: A First Pass  What is a General Strike? There will be more than a few entries in this symposium expressing some ways that agorists can form meaningful alliances with either illegalists or syndicalists. I’ve had the latter idea going for a few years now and have a large (currently) unpublished…

Agorism is the philosophy of counter-economic activity eventually overcoming the statist economic consensus. It’s not simply black market activity, but rather a whole alternative economy that operates just below the surface of state capitalism. While seen by some (including Rothbard) as a niche element to the state’s leviathan, Konkin himself noted that the counter economy…

Is there anything we as agorists, anarchists, and others of the left can do to build a revolution? What does agorism tell us about our ends, the society we wish to create, based on its means? Agorism is an anarchist philosophy of revolutionary counter-economics, but it is not the first. Agorism’s use of black and gray markets to empower…