In the 19^th and early 20^th century, anarchism was in many ways making strides into mainstream culture and thought. It was not through theory that this occurred, but rather through immediate expressions of one’s autonomy. This revolutionary method was known as direct action. Direct action emphasizes the right or duty of each individual to insist on the existence of their freedom through their actions, to openly sabotage the systems of oppression around them, to shine a light on tyranny and destroy it for all to see.

Unfortunately, this idea eventually waned or all but ceased for a couple of reasons. One is the taming of labor, the tying of its interests with the State’s and with big business. The other reason, diminishing rewards. Anarchists and revolting workers were regularly shot by police or locked in prison for years. Insisting on your freedom is great, sure, but not when it comes at the price of a decrease in your ability to act. Individual liberation is, unfortunately, hard work. And if all we face is a seemingly endless struggle, why bother?

We are here to propose a solution to this lack of incentive. In Summer 2013, a market opened up on the darknet dedicated to betting on the assassination of a public figures. In particular, these public figures need to be of the political class. A couple of months ago, this idea sparked a bit of controversy when a Forbes article featured it. And while the website is new and revolutionary, the idea has been around for quite some time. The goal? To incentivize political leaders in a new and profound way to obey what the public wants, and to diminish the amount of culpability of any particular better should an assassination takes place. The use of a crypto-currency, in order to obscure the identity of the better(s), has also been enabled with the popularization of Bitcoin, and now even further with Cody Wilson’s Dark Wallet. The original idea comes compliments of Jim Bell, one of the founders of crypto-anarchism and the author of Assassination Politics. He was subsequently hunted down by the federal government and has been in and out of prison for over a decade.

What does this market and the idea of assassination politics have to do with direct action? Incentivizing individual acts of sabotage, vandalism or expropriation. Unlike before, individuals have an added incentive outside of achieving the revolution: They have an easy method of obtaining a reward for their act of revolutionary activism. This increases the likelihood that, if someone were to organize a mass walk-out at work, co-workers would have added interest in disobeying the company’s wishes. Scabs are so often motivated by making money, rather than simply supporting the boss. So let us say to the scab, “join us instead, we’ll give you a hefty amount of bitcoin to do so.”

Of course, this does not have to only be “on the job” sabotage. We can also incentivize acts of sabotage and disobedience against the police. “5 BTCs to the man or woman who slashes all the cop car tires on Main street this Wednesday!” This adds a new and perhaps necessary motivation to commit acts which might not be already rewarding. Why not quit your day job and glue the sheriff’s office door closed? Hell, we could even bet on the boys in blue themselves to take a little bit of our money, if the price is right. We will be glad to give it, officer.

These ideas, while imbued with a crypto-anarchist attitude, are certainly not new to anarchist thought. During the height of the Abolitionist movement, Lysander Spooner encouraged individual acts of sabotage and violence against slaveholders by not only slaves and those committed to the abolitionist cause, but by those who were currently working as “freemen” for slave drivers. Spooner saw that these men cared little for their task and were much more concerned with financial reward. “So be it,” says Spooner. We want those ruthless bastards fighting for us.

From “A Plan For the Abolition of Slavery,”

“You stand ready to do all that vile and inhuman work, which must be done by somebody, but which the more decent Slaveholders themselves will not do. Yet we have heard one good report even of you. It is, that you have no such prejudices against color, nor against lib­erty, as that you would not as willingly earn money by helping a Slave to Canada, as by catching a fugitive and returning him to his master. If you are thus indifferent as to whom you serve, we advise you henceforth to serve the Slave, instead of their masters. Turn about, and help the robbed to rob their robbers. The former can afford to pay you better than the latter. Help them to get possession of the property which is rightfully their due, and they can afford to give you liberal commissions. Help them flog individual Slaveholders, and they can afford to pay you ten times as much as you ever received for flogging Slave. Help them to kidnap the Slaveholders, and they can afford to pay you more than you now get for catching fugitive Slaves. Be true to the Slaves, and we hope they will pay you well for your services. Be false to them, and we hope they will kill you.”

This is liberation for fun and profit. It does not require a moralistic banner be taken up by all against slavery, wage labor or other institutions originating with the State. The time for empty platitudes about the decency of human freedom is over. Slave drivers and the generally disinterested, your world is crumbling. The tool belt of the revolutionary is expanding. You do not have to end up penniless or in a prison cell in order to reclaim the life which is rightfully yours.  We implore you to join this cryptographic rebellion.

These online communities would function similarly to what Spooner called “vigilance committees,” where those injustices, which go unpunished by political means, are taken on directly by decentralized local forces instead. Spooner also recognized the dangers of such actions and, as stated above, such plans were hardly enforceable without great personal risk. That is no longer necessarily the case and it is time for a 21^st century implementation on this 19^th century revolutionary idea.

Of course, there are worries with this, as a previous C4SS op-ed on assassination markets has made clear. These sorts of markets are not restricted to revolutionary activity. People can use them for their own desires. There are worries that this could motivate unwarranted acts of aggression and violence against those who are not as deserving as cops, politicians or bosses. But, as is often the case with ideas like this, Pandora is out of the box. Nothing is stopping your next door neighbor from starting up an anonymous market dedicated to the lynching of any disfavored class. There is also nothing stopping that same person from simply shooting or lynching such individuals himself. So, with theoretical ideas like these, it is important to keep in mind that the necessity of education and motivating the right kind of culture is paramount.

With new tools of defense, almost always come new tools to oppress. Guns were a grand idea until we decided to give one institution with a monopolization on violence most of the weapons. So we must discourage any truly oppressive acts on these markets. We must make a society of those who despise political and economic authority, who are more than happy to set aside their day jobs and make money by tearing down the system one act of individual direct action at a time. The time to strike is now. There has never been a time more ripe than today. The libertarian community is at the forefront of this technology, pushing it forward, making evasion of law enforcement easier all the time, making it more profitable to engage in illegal and undesired activity. This is our opportunity.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Um mercado de sabotagens.

AGORIST CLASS THEORY [PDF]: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis By Wally Conger

Foreword
Introduction
The Failure of Marxism
The Marxist Appeal
Precursors to Marxist Class Theory
Marxist Classes
The Agorist Critique of Marxist Class Theory
Libertarian Class Analysis
Radical Libertarian Class Analysis
Agorist Class Theory
Agorist Solutions for Marxist Problems
Appendix: Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973)

Murray Rothbard took Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction between the political means of gaining wealth (State theft) and the economic means (production) and then portrayed them as Power vs. Market (in his book Power and Market). Unfortunately, most libertarians haven’t applied Rothbard’s concept completely and thoroughly. Explained Konkin:

Since many libertarians arrived at anarchy from the limited-government, classical liberal position, they retain a sort of three-cornered concept of struggle: the State at one apex, ‘real’ criminals at a second, and innocent society at a third. Those who commit victimless crimes, in the minarchist view, may often be put in the criminal class not for their non-crime victimless act but for avoiding trial by the State and remaining at large. Again, some anarchists have yet to entirely free themselves from this liberal statist hangover.

Remember, the liberal statists want to restrain the State to increase the production of the host to maximize eventual parasitism. They ‘control their appetites’ but continue the system of plunder. The recent political example of supply-side economics starkly illustrates the basic statist nature of such ideas: the tax rate is lowered in order to encourage greater economic production and thus a greater total tax collection in the long run.

Likewise, “free-enterprise” conservatives, and “libertarian” minarchists call for retention of the State, however restricted or restrained. They are the enemy of the agorists, the free market, and complete liberty. They fall on the statist side of the class line. “The libertarian rhetoric they offer,” Konkin wrote, “may be ‘turned’ or continued to consistency in winning over confused and marginal potential converts — but they offer no material substance for freedom. That is, they are objectively statists.”

What is meant when a person or group or people are called objectively statist? To agorists, the term is used for those who emulate the State by murdering, stealing, defrauding, raping, and assaulting. “These ‘red marketeers’ (dealing in blood, not gold or trade goods),” SEK3 explained, “are best looked upon as degenerate factions of the ruling class, in contention with the State’s police as the Cowboys fight the Yankees, the Morgans fight the Rothchilds or the Rockefellers, and the Soviet statists fight the American statists.” These “red marketeers,” say agorists, are criminals.

At the same time, all so-called (by the State) “criminals” (or criminal acts) that do not involve initiation of violence or the threat of it (coercion) are counter-economic. Since they run counter to the interests (real or perceived) of the State, and are usually productive, they are forbidden by the State. They are, therefore, objectively agorist and thus objectively revolutionary.

Wrote Konkin:

Agorist class theory has the best of both positions: a sharp class line and a graduated spectrum. Individuals are complex and confused. An individual may commit some Counter-Economic acts and some statist ones; nonetheless, each act is either Counter-Economic or statist. People (and groups of people) can be classified along a spectrum as to the predominance of agorism over statism. Yet at each given moment, one can view an action, judge it immediately, and take concrete counter-action or supportive action, if desired.

What about motivation, awareness, consciousness of actions and their consequences, and professions of agreement? They are irrelevant; agorists judge one solely by one’s acts. And one is responsible for fully restoring one’s victims to the pre-aggression state of being for each and every act (see New Libertarian Manifesto, chapter 2). Konkin explains:

Regular, repeated patterns of aggression make one a habitual criminal — a statist (or ‘pure statist’). These people earn no wealth and have no property. Their loot is forfeit to revolutionary agorists as agents of the victims. The pure statist subclass includes all political officeholders, police, military, civil service, grantholders and subsidy receivers. There is a special subclass of the pure statists who not only accept plunder and enforce or maintain the machinery of the State but actually direct and control it. In ‘socialist’ countries, these are the top officeholders of the governing political party who usually (though not always) have top government offices. In the ‘capitalist’ countries, these super-statists seldom appear in government positions, preferring to control directly the wealth of their state-interfaced corporations, usually banks, energy monopolists and army suppliers. Here we find the Power Elite, Higher Circles, Invisible Government, Ruling Class and Insider Conspiracy that other ideological groupings have detected and identified.

Towards the other end of the spectrum [from statists] are full-time counter-economists,” SEK3 explained. “They reject government offerings and disregard State regulations. If they report an income, it is a tiny proportion of what they actually earn; if they file a report, it’s highly misleading but plausible. Their occupations are fulfilling demand that the State strives to suppress or exterminate. They not only act freely, but often heroically.

Just as the superstatists understand the State’s workings and use it consciously, there exist those at the counter-economic end of the spectrum who understand the pure libertarian consistency and morality of their acts; these are the agorists. “Against the Power Elite is the anti-power elite — the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre (or New Libertarian Alliance),” Konkin wrote.

But what of the “middle class” on the spectrum? What of those who mix commission of some counter-economic acts (black spots) with some statist acts (white spots), their lives summed up by grayness? Konkin described the middle-class this way:

To the statists, they are the victims, the herds of cattle to be slaughtered and sheep to be sheared. To the Agorists, they are the external marketplace, to receive nearly everything in trade — but trust.

And some day they shall either take control of their lives and polarize one way or the other, or fail to do so and shall stagnate in the statist swamp or be borne away on the winds of revolutionary change.

Konkin offered a scenario, using agorist class theory, to illustrate the difference between a limited-government libertarian and an agorist:

Consider the individual standing at the corner of the street. He can see two sides of the building behind him as he prepares to cross the street. He is hailed and turns around to see an acquaintance from the local libertarian club approaching in one direction. The latter advocates ‘working through the system’ and is an armed government agent. Walking along the other side of the building is another acquaintance, same age, gender, degree of closeness and so on, who is a practicing counter-economist. She also may be armed and is undoubtedly carrying the very kind of contraband the State’s agent is empowered to act on. Seeing you, the first individual waves and confirms she indeed has the illegal product — and is about to run into the ‘libertarian statist’ at the corner. Both are slightly distracted, looking at you.

The situation is not likely to happen too often but it’s quite possible. Only the removal of ‘complicating factors’ is contrived. If you fail to act, the counter-economist will be taken by surprise and arrested or killed. If she is warned, she may — at this last-minute — elect to defend herself before flight and thus injure the agent. You are aware of this and must act now — or fail to act.

The agorist may take some pains to cover his warning so that he will not get involved in a crossfire, but he will act. The socialist has a problem if the State agent works for a socialist state. Even the ‘libertarian’ has a problem. Let’s make it really rough: the State agent contributes heavily to the local ‘libertarian’ club or party (for whatever reasons; many such people are known to this author). The counter-economist refuses to participate except socially to the group. For whose benefit would the ‘political libertarian’ act?

Such choices will increase in frequency when the State increases repression or the agorists increase their resistance. Both are likely in the near future.

Agorist class theory is quite practical.

“So, what would happen if 99% of us got together and showed up to vote?”

Ha, ha, it’s a trick question. If 99% of us got together and showed up to vote, 73,760,300 of us (= 23.5%) would be told to go to hell because they’re under 18, about 22,500,000 (= 7%) of us would be told to go to hell because they’re non-citizens, about 5,850,000 (~ 1.8%) would be told to go to hell because they’re legally barred from voting due to a felony conviction. Then we’d look around and notice that 2,400,000 of us (~ 0.7%) never showed up, because they were in prison and so couldn’t quite make it to the polling place.

The 77% or so of us that were left over would then go into the polling place, and they would vote for whoever the hell the Republican Party or the Democratic Party happened to nominate for President of the United States. It’s hard to know in advance, but probably the Democrat would win. And we would have 4 more years of the kind of revolutionary social transformation we’ve experienced under the past 6 years of Democratic administrations.

So Congress is set to pass another gargantuan ($100 billion per year) “farm bill.”

And of course, the 500-pound gorilla is the “food stamp” portion of the bill, which is set to be cut by a whopping 1%, while the overall measure increases “farm bill” spending by 37% over that of its predecessor bill over its 10-year projected life (I say “projected,” because the last “10-year” farm bill was passed six years ago).

I got that figure from Michael Tanner, who got it from Chris Edwards. Both of them are with the Cato Institute. And being able to get that figure from them was convenient, since it’s Tanner’s latest article on the “farm bill” that I’m about to take issue with. To wit, Tanner writes:

No doubt conservatives will complain about the food-stamp spending, but whatever one thinks about our ever-growing safety net, there is simply no excuse for the farm portion of the bill, which is pure corporate welfare.

Well, no. It’s all corporate welfare.

“Food stamps” aren’t about feeding people. They’re about making taking money from people and then giving some of it back with the requirement that it be spent on farm goods instead of on, say, televisions or tennis shoes.

Ditto for WIC, “school lunch” programs, etc.

No, I’m not saying that these programs don’t feed poor people. I’m just pointing out that the feeding of poor people is a fig leaf, an incidental side effect. The purpose of these programs isn’t to feed people, it’s to transfer money from your bank account to Big Ag’s bank accounts whether that’s where you prefer to spend your money or not.

[cross-posted from KN@PPSTER]

AGORIST CLASS THEORY [PDF]: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis By Wally Conger

Foreword
Introduction
The Failure of Marxism
The Marxist Appeal
Precursors to Marxist Class Theory
Marxist Classes
The Agorist Critique of Marxist Class Theory
Libertarian Class Analysis
Radical Libertarian Class Analysis
Agorist Class Theory
Agorist Solutions for Marxist Problems
Appendix: Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973)

Murray Rothbard himself continued to expand upon Libertarian Class Theory. His roots in the Old Right had introduced him to populist “bankers conspiracy” theories and the like. Added class viewpoints came from Left-statists and earlier anarchists. What he discovered was that the proponents of ruling classes, power elites, politico-economic conspiracies, and Higher Circles pointed to roughly the same gang at the top of the sociological pyramid.

Rothbard introduced the work of three Left Revisionist analysts to Libertarian Class Theory: Gabriel Kolko, Carl Oglesby, and G. William Domhoff.

Historian Kolko’s Triumph of Conservatism detailed how “capitalists” thwarted the relatively free marketplace of the late 19th century and conspired with the State to become “robber barons” and monopolists. Rothbard’s adoption of the Kolko viewpoint severed the alliance between radical libertarians and free-market apologists for conservatism.

Oglesby, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, co-authored Containment and Change in 1967, which argued for an alliance between the New Left and the libertarian, non-interventionist Old Right in opposing imperialistic U.S. foreign policy. In The Yankee and Cowboy War (1976), Oglesby tied in current assassination-conspiracy theories to present a division in the ruling class. Important for both Rothbard and Oglesby was the division within the Higher Circles; the internal conflict between those controlling the State manifests itself in political electioneering, corruption and entrapment (Watergate), assassination and, finally, outright warfare. Wrote SEK3: “The class consciousness of the superstatists, while high, does not include class solidarity.”

What were the “Higher Circles”? The term came from Domhoff, a research professor of psychology, who described them as a subtle aristocracy with similar mating habits and association characteristics previously seen in other holders of State power and privilege. Rothbard’s discovery and dissemination of Domhoff’s work provided a solid base for his Power Elite analysis.

In nearly every ruling-class theory, the top of the statist pyramid was occupied by David Rockefeller’s interlocking-directorate corporate control of U.S. and international finance and the band of Court Intellectuals and corporate allies found in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and lesser-known groups. Once a ruling group was identified, its nature could be examined further and its actions observed and eventually predicted.

Two formidable blocks have prevented even the radical libertarians from offering a comprehensive class model to compete with essentially dead Marxist alternatives. The first block is a “culture lag,” most notably in the U.S., where talking about classes is perceived as “offensive” and “impolite.” As SEK3 remarked, “Only rightist kooks and commies talk about ruling classes and class structures.”

The second roadblock is simply the limitation of libertarian theory. With the exception of agorists, even most radical libertarians see a political solution to statism. Wrote Konkin:

In building political coalitions to seize the apex of State control, it pays not to look too closely at the class interests of your backers and temporary allies. …

This limitation can be understood in another way. When libertarian ideologues attack alleged libertarians for not freeing themselves of State institutions, State subsidies, or actual State jobs, they reply ‘tu quoque.’ That is, how can the ‘purist’ libertarians enjoy the supposed benefits of State roads, monopolized postal delivery and even municipal sidewalks and then accuse those wearing a Libertarian label of selling out by getting elected to office, accepting tax-collected salaries and wielding actual political power — on the way to ‘withering away’ the State, no doubt.

Agorists have had no such problem with a distinction, nor do they find any disjunction between means and ends. Furthermore, the simple premises of agorist class theory lead quickly to sharp judgments about the moral nature (in libertarian theory) and practical nature of any individual’s human action. That is, agorists have a comprehensive class theory ready to supplant the Marxist paradigm which also avoids the flaws in semi-libertarian half-hearted theory and its attendant compromises. As to be expected, it begins with Counter-Economics.

When the basic premise of the drug war is that we do not own our own bodies, the recurring theme of police sexual assault in the media over the last several months seem less like freak occurrence and more like an expected, perhaps its inevitable outcome. Last year there was the police rape of a New Mexico man and another very similar incident in El Paso, In both cases, the victims were held under suspicion of carrying drugs inside their bodies, and subjected to numerous intense and invasive violations as successive tests turned up negative. These cases are gruesome, graphic and brutal examples of the kind of power the state has granted itself over us.

It does not end with just these incidents; strip searches are routine at airports. If we wish to travel via air, then we must grant the state permission to invade our privacy and our bodies. Probably the most explicit form of state rape — that is some kind of sexual assault or violation undertaken by a representative, or someone with authority granted by the state — is prison rape. What gives a government official this power? If we consider the specific case of the man in New Mexico, it is unlikely that two men on the street would have been able to apprehend him and conduct these acts without him protesting, resisting, trying to get away or, at the very least, gaining support from bystanders.

Given the position of authority granted to these men, however, means that physical resistance isn’t even a reasonable response. The presence of law enforcement in this man’s ordeal provided the implicit threat of an infinitely scalable escalation of violence. Had he attempted to stop one of the doctors from violating him, at least one officer would have gotten involved to subdue him; were he successful in subduing one cop, it is likely that a second cop would have used lethal force against him; in the unlikely event that he could have stopped this, the state has near unlimited resources to stop him. He could be chased to other states, even extradited from another nation. As soon as the state is involved in a situation like this, the individual citizen has already lost. While some instances are eventually dealt with in an appropriate manner, the aforementioned prison rape by prison authorities shows that even after sexual assault takes place, the opportunity for recourse is minimal to non-existent — to the point where authorities were able to deny that such a thing was even a problem.

Recently a report by the Department of Justice, surveying nearly 2 million prisoners from federal, state, local and private prisons, found that almost half of sexual assaults in prison are perpetrated by prison staff. In cases where allegations were substantiated, less than half the offenders were prosecuted or faced jail time. This issue stems from the conflict of interest that arises when state officials are expected to be held accountable to and prosecuted by other state officials. It’s the same reason we don’t see police engaged in acts of brutality being handcuffed by their peers. Inmates attempting to report such offenses must deal with possible retaliation by the accused or their peers, who have been granted power over them by the state. As demonstrated before, their actions carry with them the implicit threat of infinitely scalable violence.

If these cases do reach court, again we have the problem of representatives of the state sympathizing with fellow agents of the justice system. This is exemplified by the recent sentencing of a police officer charged with violently anally assaulting twelve victims. The officer in question, who is by any account a serial rapist, faces only two years in prison. Four other officers were involved, reportedly assisting by holding down and even pointing guns at the victims. The accomplices face no charges at all.

Writing here about the horrors of state rape and the power dynamics involved is in no way meant to minimise the horrors of rape by private individuals against others. The difference in this situation is that the power given to the attackers is artificial. With the elimination of the organisation that grants the power to strip rights from other human beings, backed by the implicit threat of infinitely scalable violence, we can at least remove this scourge from our society.

The future of news is much like the future anarchist society we all dream about but can never succinctly put into words: at the end of the day, we just don’t know what it’s going to look like.

Professional prognosticators, including many of my colleagues(?), make a pretty penny predicting the predilections of newsophiles five, 10, or 20 years down the line. And I’m willing to bet a significantly smaller sum that while they may get some details right here and there, on the whole, they’re all going to be wrong to a greater or lesser degree.

The future of news will most likely not consist primarily of radio, television or newsprint, but it might. It will probably operate on a decentralized basis akin to today’s social media (but for everything), but then again, it might not. People already don’t have to rely on network news, public radio or major legacy newspapers – hence the net decline in viewer-, listener- and readership – but these things keep on surviving, leading me to believe that they’ll continue to do so long into “the future.”

I read a post on Medium recently, about a project from 2004 that “predicted” where media was going to be today called EPIC 2014. It was 80 percent incorrect, but the overarching themes of the project still managed to resonate with the developments of the following decade.

For instance:

In the year 2014, people have access to a breadth and depth of information unimaginable in an earlier age. Everyone contributes in some way. Everyone participates to create a living, breathing mediascape.

By and large, that’s true. But it isn’t true that Google and Amazon merged, or that the New York Times spent the 10 years between 2004 and now suing the pants off any new media company or group that dared challenge its hegemony. Potentially, that would have been a more welcome, if also drastically more dystopian world, than the one we live in where paywalls are awkwardly implemented then discarded without hardly a word from the offending parties.

Remember when “Honest Bob” Murray of Murray Industries whined about a “War on Coal”? Most people in “Honest Bob’s” situation would’ve had the sense to keep their pie holes shut, considering he was responsible for the negligent homicide of the coal miners who died in one of his death traps just a few years earlier in the Crandall Canyon mine collapse. “Honest Bob’s” workers probably thought he’d declared a war on them.

And from the looks of things in the news lately, coal’s declared a war on us — with lots of help from the coercive apparatus of the state. A 60-year-old storage tank at a Freedom Industries site in Charleston, West Virginia leaked MCHM, an industrial chemical used to clean coal, and contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 residents. No doubt “Honest Bob” was dancing with joy at the thought of being superseded by a coal industry figure even sleazier than himself.

Murray Energy, the coal industry, and the fossil fuels industry as a whole have benefited massively from systematic state intervention on their behalf. The state’s actions on the industry’s behalf include not only original enclosure and appropriation of vast tracts of land and the resources on it — often to the prejudice of those already living there — but the use of armed troops in pitched battles to break strikes and the massive preemption and nullification of tort liability laws that would long ago have rendered the coal and fossil fuels industries bankrupt from damages for the harm they’ve done to surrounding communities and their own workers.

East of the Mississippi, enormous tracts of “vacant” land (except for American Indians already living there) were preempted by colonial governments, and doled out to favored persons in grants often comprising millions of acres. Land in the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge that was homesteaded by early settlers — who hence had no formal title because government was still irregular — was later expropriated by railroad and mining companies. A good fictional example is the indie movie “Matewan,” set in the 1920s Coal Wars of West Virginia. Striking miners in a tent city outside town, besieged by Pinkertons and sheriff’s deputies, were rescued by armed people who came down out of the woods to their aid. These so-called “hillbillies” were the descendants of earlier settlers, whose land had been stolen by the mining company and who consequently fled into the hills to eke out a subsistence on marginal land.

West of the Mississippi it was even worse. The great majority of land in the Guadalupe-Hidalgo session went directly from being state property of the Republic of Mexico to being U.S. federal land. Some of this land was later settled by farmers under the terms of the Homestead Act. Much more of it (an area roughly equivalent to France) was given away — with much less difficulty of claiming it — to railroads, not only to provide the actual rights-of-way, but also strips of land several miles on either side of the actual route to provide the railroad companies with valuable real estate as a source of funding. Still a great deal more of the land — a majority of land in some Plains and Rocky Mountain states — was retained in the “public” domain; this land, from which individual settlers had been conveniently excluded, was preferentially leased to mining, logging, oil and ranching interests for almost nothing.

Likewise the regulatory state — ostensibly created to protect the public from pollution and health hazards and labor from unsafe working conditions — preempted older,, traditional common law standards of tort liability. to the surrounding population for all the serious pollution, health effects, economic effects of watershed destruction, etc., etc., etc., from mountaintop removal. Quite simply, companies that engage in the kind of risky offshore drilling BP does, or in fracking or mountaintop removal, would not be able to afford staying in business in a just world. If local juries were free to award damages equal to the actual harm inflicted by these activities, the cost of liability insurance would outweigh likely profits in most cases. What’s more, without the corporate veil to hide behind the boys in the C-suites and boards of directors would have to fear having their entire personal fortunes seized to pay damages.

Workplace safety laws provide minimal protections at best, and even their requirements on paper often go unenforced because of chummy relationships between management and federal inspectors (the latter two groups reportedly having had sex on their desks on the Deepwater Horizons drilling rig). According to an independent analysis after the Crandall Canyon disaster, the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s review of the roof control plans submitted for the operation — where the central pillars supporting the roof collapsed — were perfunctory.

After Deepwater Horizons, the Crandall Canyon collapse and the Charleston MCHM spill, it should be obvious that federal labor, workplace safety and environmental laws are nearly worthless most of the time, and not much better even when enforced. So long as the state exists, the legal regime will never be made effective at preventing things like the Deepwater Horizons disaster or Crandall Canyon through any kind of governmental “reform,” because to do that would destroy not only the business models of the regulated industries, but the entire economic model that depends on wasting the artificially cheap energy and resource inputs those industries provide.

The only viable alternative is direct action. Ways to stop environmental pollution by energy companies include physically blocking pipeline construction and sabotaging equipment, doxing corporate officials and harassing them at their homes, churches and country clubs, and whistleblowing by employees (not martyrdom — just saving stuff to a thumb drive and anonymously sending copies to every reporter and advocacy group you can think of will work fine). Workers can fight for a safe working environment using an entire arsenal of time-honored direction techniques, many of them discussed by the Wobblies in the pamphlet “How to Fire Your Boss”:  Whistleblowing, doxing, and other public information/humiliation campaigns (including joint campaigns with friendly community organizers and social justice advocacy groups and boycotts like the successful campaign by the Coalition of Imolakee Workers), picketing and leafleting rights-of-way, random unannounced one-day wildcat strikes or sick-ins, slowdowns, and working to rule, protests and suppliers, contractors and outlets, enlisting the sympathy of teamsters who haul dangerous cargo — the list is endless.

The basic point is the state works for employers and resource extractors, not for us. So instead of begging the state to protect us from industry wrongdoers, we must do it ourselves.

AGORIST CLASS THEORY [PDF]: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis By Wally Conger

Foreword
Introduction
The Failure of Marxism
The Marxist Appeal
Precursors to Marxist Class Theory
Marxist Classes
The Agorist Critique of Marxist Class Theory
Libertarian Class Analysis
Radical Libertarian Class Analysis
Agorist Class Theory
Agorist Solutions for Marxist Problems
Appendix: Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973)

Marx’s class analysis, with its recurring problem of the cross-class nature of statists and anti-statists, lies in shreds. Clearly, oppression exists, but another class model is needed to explain how it works.

The Libertarian Class Model advanced by Murray N. Rothbard is based on the relation of the individual to the State, which springs from Franz Oppenheimer’s paradigm of the evolution of the State. The sweep of history, Oppenheimer wrote, was a long account of the parasitic class continually transforming itself with new religions and ideologies to justify its existence and repeatedly hoodwink the productive class into serving it. As SEK3 explained:

Today the State uses democracy (victim participation in his own plunder), liberalism (leash the State to make it more palatable), conservatism (unleash the State against ‘enemies’ — commies or capitalists, perverts or straights, heretics or orthodox believers, difference 1 or difference 2), and other nostrums, snake-oil or anti-concepts to beguile its victims into accepting continued plunder (taxation), murder (war and execution), and slavery (conscription and taxation again).

Socialism, including Marxist variants, is just another dogma used to justify the State’s existence, and it is one of the most appealing.

Almost all libertarians accept that the State divides society into two classes: those who gain by the existence of the State and those who lose. Most libertarians also agree that society would be better off if the State were eliminated or at least shrunk significantly. But despite efforts of the late Rothbard and others to raise libertarian class consciousness, most American libertarians seem to find discussion of class theory offensive, “impolite,” and “not respectable.” They appear to believe that only right-wing kooks and commies talk about ruling classes and class structures. Nevertheless, efforts to expand Libertarian Class Theory into a comprehensive model have continued.

Humans are social beings. We organize ourselves into groups, build relationships, enjoy creative labor and seek fellowship. From childhood to adulthood, who we are greatly depends on our relationships with those closest to us. We are also heavily influenced by the social, cultural and institutional circumstances of our lives. Institutions, then, have major implications for our rights, welfare, labor, aspirations and associations. This warrants pause and careful reflection. Are institutions with such authority legitimate? The libertarian position is that illegitimate authority should be dismantled.

The January 9 industrial disaster that struck West Virginia should raise such reflection in the mountains.

The extractive resource industry has a firm hold on the wild, wonderful, but wounded Appalachians.  The use of eminent domain and compulsory pooling has robbed communities of their cultural and natural heritage. Capital is the authority of the Appalachian coalfields, and has created systemic poverty and mono economies. Instead of prosperity in the commons, the mechanism of authority has spawned tragedy.

Property is theft in Appalachia. The current system is concerned with the well-being of the politically connected corporati instead of the common good — Appalachian communities. This system exists because legal privilege is granted to industry. The development of this socio-economic order is political, as opposed to free and participatory. The current authority in the coalfields, the corporate state, is illegitimate. It is far past time we transition to society free of it.

Appalachia is a region plauged with ecological destruction, where labor is on the decline and persistent class struggle exists. Appalachia is also a place of community, a place where the commons work against these problems. Given the chance a mutual political economy would thrive in Appalachia.

Appalachian life is enriched by common land. Communal areas to this day are still shared for livestock, hunting, root digging, recreation and more. The growth of industry in the region, however, and its subsequent property monopoly has made these traditions difficult to practice. Even family cemeteries are now industrial property — folks need permission to pay their respects to the dead. Common property ownership is now manifesting itself in the form of community land trusts and conservation easements. Common natural resources — water, air, land, and biodiversity — are under direct threat from industry in Appalachia. Such vital natural resources are a public good. They should be neither rivalrous nor excludable. In Appalachia, however, clean air and water are subject to exploitation. It is a privilege to have access to these resources. The coal town of Bud West, Virginia, for example, has not had clean water in over five months.

Reclaiming the commons in Appalachia will allow new markets to develop. Numerous institutions and networks will emerge. In the commons, social power will build anew within the shell of the old. This cannot happen under centralized authority. States and big business are guided by self-interest. The commons are guided by co-operation and mutualism — the natural, biological tendencies of human beings.

Luckily, the transition to a brighter future has already begun.

Small scale, decentralized markets are rising in the Appalachian coalfields. In West Virginia, coal miners who lost their jobs to the mechanization of the industry have started developing environmental markets. Worker coalitions are helping communities save money via efficiency programs. Social movements are working to protect mountain ecology and alleviate poverty. Appalachia is speaking truth to power. Economic transition, solidarity economies, restoration ecology and even more regeneration is coming to the gentle mountains. This regeneration will be fully actualized when property and power are once again where they belong — with the people.

AGORIST CLASS THEORY [PDF]: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis By Wally Conger

Foreword
Introduction
The Failure of Marxism
The Marxist Appeal
Precursors to Marxist Class Theory
Marxist Classes
The Agorist Critique of Marxist Class Theory
Libertarian Class Analysis
Radical Libertarian Class Analysis
Agorist Class Theory
Agorist Solutions for Marxist Problems
Appendix: Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973)

Marx’s Class Theory failed to see that those workers classically considered proletariat would become growingly obsolescent. In North America, unionized skilled workers are in decline, being absorbed by new entrepreneurship (franchising, independent contracting and consulting), the service industry, scientific research and development, increased managerial function without human labor underneath for exploitation, and bureaucracy. Wrote SEK3:

The entrepreneurial problem is unsolvable for Marxism, because Marx failed to recognize the economic category. The best Marxists can do is lump them with new, perhaps mutated, capitalist forms. But if they are to fit the old class system, they are petit bourgeois, the very group that is to either collapse into proletarians or rise into the monopoly capitalist category. Small business should not increase in the ‘advanced, decadent stages of capitalism.’

Marxism also does not deal with the persistent Counter-Economy (i.e., a peaceful black market or underground economy). There is a spectrum of the Counter-Economy “tainting” workers, entrepreneurs, and even capitalists. Said Konkin:

Scientists, managers, even civil servants do not merely accept bribes and favors but actively seek second, unreported employment in the ‘black market.’ And the more ‘socialist’ the State, the bigger the nalevo, ‘black work’ or ‘underground’ component of the economy. … [T]his turns Marx ‘on his head’ … : ‘advanced capitalism’ is generating runaway free-enterprise (the Old-Fashioned kind) in reaction; the more decadent (statist) the capitalism, the more virulent the reaction and the larger the Counter-Economy.

But even worse is the class of Counter-Economists. That is, by Marxist class structure, the black marketeers cannot be a class: workers, capitalists and entrepreneurs in active collusion against a common enemy, the State. True, many do not perceive themselves as in a common class and some even try to deny their ‘black’ activities even to themselves, thanks to religious and social guilt induction. And yet, when the agents of the State appear to enforce the ‘laws’ of the Power Elite, the Counter-Economists from tax-dodging businessman to drug-dealing hippie to illegal alien to feminist midwife are willing to signal each other with the universal: ‘Watch it, the fuzz/pigs/flics/federales/etc.!’ …

Even in extreme cases, the commonality of the Counter-Economist has generated an economic determinism as strong as any Marx considered to weld ‘class unity.’ But this is still not the worst.

This class unity is not that of a workers’ class (though workers are heavily involved) nor of a capitalist class (though capitalists are involved) nor even of a ruling class — this class is based on the commonality of risk, arising from a common source (the State). And risk is not proletarian (or particularly capitalist); it is purely entrepreneurial.

Again, to make it clear, if the ‘entrepreneuriat’ are tossed into the capitalist class, then the Marxist must face the contradiction of ‘capitalists’ at war with the capitalist-controlled State.

At this point, Marx’s class analysis is in shreds. Clearly, oppression exists, but another model is needed to explain how it works.

Durante diciembre de 2013 y enero de 2014 logramos algunas reproducciones interesantes de nuestro material traducido al español:

«El Papa Juguetea con la Economía», de Sheldon Richman, fue reproducido por El Librepensador, un periódico online independiente en España.

El Librepensador también reprodujo «La Privacidad en 2014: La Fábula del Acaparador», y «Privacidad 2014: ¿Scroogled?», ambos de Tom Knapp.

Los tres artículos anteriores, así como «2013: Finaliza una Era y Comienza una Nueva» de Tom Knapp, fueron reproducidas por Before It’s News, que publica con bastante regularidad nuestro material en inglés, por lo que es interesante ver que también están publicando nuestro material en español.

Y por último, aunque no menos importante, el blog de El Libertario, un prominente periódico anarquista venezolano, publicó «¿«Privatización» o Corporatismo?» de Kevin Carson, y mi «Patriarcado con Esteroides: La Fiebre de la Cirugía Plástica en Venezuela».

Arrancamos el 2014 con un esfuerzo renovado en cuanto a producción de contenido en español, comprometiéndonos a traducir por lo menos cuatro artículos al mes, y a construir una lista de contactos mediáticos con los que cultivaremos relaciones.

¡Apoya a C4SS!

¡Salud!

Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn discuss the terrorist character of the late Ariel Sharon.

Binoy Kampmark discusses the march to war with Iran.

Andrew Levine discusses what will happen for Obama upon the unraveling of Iraq.

Alfred McCoy discusses the surveillance state.

Kevin Carson discusses the worship of authority.

Jose Martinez discusses Wal-Mart racism.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses the legacy of a congressman who helped reveal covert crimes.

Peter Frase discusses leftism and the state.

Will Wilkinson discusses liberalism, libertarianism, and the illiberal security state.

Chase Madar discusses the hawkishness of supposed human rights advocates.

Eric Draitser discusses the resistance to NATO rule in Libya.

Sheldon Richman responds to a recent hit piece on Juilan Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden.

William A. Cohn discusses the farce of secret law.

David Swanson discusses the stopping of war.

Lew Rockwell discusses 21st century mussolinism.

Stephan Kinsella discusses the libertarian case for gay marriage.

Michael S. Rozeff discusses the national security state.

Nick Gillespie discusses how the FBI’s ugly past undermines Obama’s War on Terror.

Paul Buhle reviews a new book on Robert M. La Follette.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses Robert Gate’s new memoir.

Daniel McCarthy discusses Leo Strauss and the American right.

Carole Simonnet discusses pot smoking in Mexico.

Daniel McCarthy reviews a book on Leo Strauss.

Robert Colls discusses George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War.

Ivan Eland discusses the growing militarization of U.S. society.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses why the GOP can’t win on a hawkish platform.

J.D. Tuccille discusses the weak reforms of the NSA.

Roman Skaskiw discusses Albert Jay Nock’s famous memoir.

Mark Donlan reviews Chess Superminitaures.

John S. Hilbert discusses Charles Seymour Taylor.

AGORIST CLASS THEORY [PDF]: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis By Wally Conger

Foreword
Introduction
The Failure of Marxism
The Marxist Appeal
Precursors to Marxist Class Theory
Marxist Classes
The Agorist Critique of Marxist Class Theory
Libertarian Class Analysis
Radical Libertarian Class Analysis
Agorist Class Theory
Agorist Solutions for Marxist Problems
Appendix: Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973)

Marx recognized that the millennium-old class structure of Europe was drastically and noticeably changing and that he lived in a revolutionary time. As SEK3 explained:

The old order was making way for a new one. The Aristocracy was on its way out, either to liquidation (as in France and the U.S.) or to vestigial status, kept around for ceremonial purpose by a sentimental bourgeoisie (and lower classes) as in England. The bourgeoisie was in the ascendancy in the first half of the nineteenth century — Marx’s formative and most active years.

Future events could and were explained by this class struggle theory: the Europe-wide rebellion of 1848 swept away much of aristocratic power restored after Napoleon’s defeat; the American Civil War was the Northern bourgeoisie’s way of smashing the remnant of landed aristocracy preserved as by the South.

While this phenomenon so far was widely acknowledged (though it applied poorly to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1), Marx was as interested in the transformation of the Lower Class as in that of the Upper Class. Peasants were being driven off their farms, serfs were given their freedom to go to the cities to become industrial workers. And here was the focus of Marx’s insight.

First, based on Adam Smith’s Labor Theory of Value, Marx saw the evolving workers as the only real productive class. He saw the bourgeoisie evolving into a smaller, aristocratic group that held ownership of the new means of production: factories, assembly lines, distribution/transportation systems, etc. The world, Marx said, was being neatly divided between a non-productive class (the former bourgeoisie, now capitalists) and a productive class skilled in using capital goods but not owning them (the proletariat). Capital would control the State. To Marx, this was the world of the future, as evident in his present.

Marx’s second insight was based on Hegel’s dialectical materialism. History was an ongoing clash of ideas: the thesis existed, the anti-thesis rose in opposition, and the clash created a synthesis (a new thesis). Wrote SEK3: “This is why Marxist sloganeers always call for ‘struggle’ — it’s all their theory allows them to do!”

So just as the bourgeoisie ousted the aristocracy to create capitalism (the synthesis), Marx declared that the new proletariat would oust capital and synthesize into, well, nothing. The proletariat victory, Marx predicted, would eventually end classes and class conflict. Granted, the proletariat (or, rather, its vanguard elite) would control the State temporarily. But once classes vanished and there was no class conflict to repress, the State would “wither away.”

Accusations of cruelty are often leveled against Ayn Rand. How accurate is this charge? The answer is a complicated one. One can find traces of both kindness and cruelty in her life/work. Both deserve consideration in formulating a clear perspective.

Let’s examine a case of cruelty first:

“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using…. What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their “right” to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent.” * Source: “Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974”

Ayn Rand endorses the European conquest and genocide of the Native American population here.

A contrasting example is provided by:

At the time, Rand and husband, Frank O’Connor, lived in a rural area north of Los Angeles, now part of Chatsworth. Rand hired Haruno as a cook—even though June says her mother couldn’t cook very well and in spite of Rand already having a cook. Ryoji was also hired to help Frank with the flowers that he grew on the property—even though Mr. Kato had no previous experience gardening. Ten-year-old Ken was a bit young to be hired for anything. As for June, though she had just graduated high school, and had no experience, Rand hired her as well, to come to the house every weekend and do typing. In addition to paying a salary to June, Ryoji and Haruno, Rand also gave the family two rooms in her house so they had a place to live. Damn, apparently she didn’t know that generosity was against her own philosophy. No one told her. But then, she was such a monster, who would dare? In addition to the Kato family another resident in Rand’s home was Maria Strachova, an elderly refugee who had taught English to Rand as a child. Rand took her in for a year.

Ayn Rand performs acts of kindness and geneorosity here.

Which one is the real Rand? Both. She was a complicated human being like the rest of us.

If I understand Princeton historian Sean Wilentz correctly, progressives ought not to be grateful to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald for exposing government spying because they are not card-carrying progressives. (“Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?”) Apparently they have either hung out with libertarians, praised or supported a libertarian, or said something sympathetic to some part of the libertarian philosophy — which cancels out anything they might have gotten credit for. (Wilentz is no stickler for consistency, since he criticizes Greenwald for taking libertarian positions now and also for making anti-immigration statements in the past. So is he too libertarian, Professor, or not libertarian enough? For an analysis of Wilentz’s McCarthyite tactics, see Justin Raimondo.)

The problem for Wilentz is that when guys like these disclose that the government conducts comprehensive surveillance in ways that would have made O’Brien drool, it puts the entire progressive agenda in jeopardy. He writes,

To them, national security is not a branch of the government; it is the government, or it is tantamount to being the government: a sinister, power-mad authority.… It is impossible, therefore, to reform this clandestine Leviathan from the inside. And so the leakers are aiming at de-legitimating and, if possible, destroying something much larger than a set of NSA programs. They have unleashed a torrent of classified information with the clear intent of showing that the federal government has spun out of control, thereby destroying the public’s faith in their government’s capacity to spy aggressively on our enemies while also protecting the privacy of its citizens. They want to spin the meaning of the documents they have released to confirm their animating belief that the United States is an imperial power, drunk on its hegemonic ambitions. [Emphasis added.]

At first glance, that seems odd. If individuals are willing to risk their lives and liberty to reveal that the government vacuums up vast quantities of information on everyone — without probable cause or even grounds for suspicion — why do their larger agendas matter? Shouldn’t progressives care about this even if they disagree with other things the leakers believe?

But it matters to Wilentz. Employing a dubious logic, he apparently reasons thusly: We have a government worthy of support because of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and protection from “our enemies.” Leaks which reveal that this government spies on us indiscriminately erode confidence in that government and, by implication, all those good things. Therefore, people with apparently libertarian motives who leak that information are to be reviled.

If you caught that bit of question-begging above, well done! Wilentz repeatedly assumes what is in dispute. For example, he fears that “the public’s faith in their government’s capacity to spy aggressively on our enemies while also protecting the privacy of its citizens” is being destroyed, yet he never gets around to showing that the government can do both things. He claims, without evidence, that the government is worthy of allegiance and is not “an imperial power, drunk on its hegemonic ambitions.” But as Henry Farrell writes at Crooked Timber, “There’s plenty of evidence both of imperialism and hegemonic drunkenness.”

Wilentz commits another bit of question-begging. He says Snowden, Assange, and Greenwald share a “political impulse that might be described … as paranoid libertarianism.”

Oh my! The qualifier paranoid suggests that libertarians unreasonably believe that the government may not have the best interests of regular people at heart. Wilentz assumes — without argument — that we libertarians are wrong about that. But if we’re right, then paranoia is a baseless charge. So Professor Wilentz is obligated to show that we are wrong before he uses that defamatory qualifier.

He will have a tough time pulling off that feat, for throughout American history the government has destroyed as much freedom as it could get away with. As Chris Hedges sums up (in a mock Obama speech, “What Obama Really Meant Was …”),

Americans were steadily shorn of their most basic constitutional rights and their traditions of limited government. U.S. intelligence agencies were always anchored in a system of secrecy — with little effective oversight from either elected leaders or ordinary citizens.…

In the 1960s, the U.S. government spied on civil rights leaders, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and critics of the Vietnam War, just as today we are spying on Occupy activists, environmentalists, whistle-blowers and other dissidents. And partly in response to these revelations decades ago, especially regarding the FBI’s covert dirty tricks program known as COINTELPRO, laws were established in the 1970s to ensure that our intelligence capabilities could not be misused against our citizens. In the long, twilight struggle against communism, and now in the fight against terrorism, I am happy to report that we have eradicated all of these reforms and laws.

Wilentz seems to live in fear that the baby — the welfare/warfare state — will be thrown out with the bathwater — the admitted “abuses” by the NSA. (He does not regard the NSA as abusive per se.) “Where liberals, let alone right-wingers, have portrayed the leakers as truth-telling comrades intent on protecting the state and the Constitution from authoritarian malefactors, that’s hardly their goal,” Wilentz writes. “In fact, the leakers despise the modern liberal state, and they want to wound it.”

If only it were so.

Peter Frase at Jacobin makes an interesting point when he sees in Wilentz’s article “an attempt to conflate the ideal of the liberal state with the existing national security state, in an attempt to force defenders of the welfare state to also embrace the authoritarian warfare state.” He continues,

I think that when leftists set themselves up as defenders of government against libertarian hostility to the state, they unwittingly accept the Right’s framing of the debate in a way that’s neither an accurate representation of reality nor a good guide to political action.

The Right, in its libertarian formulation, loves to set itself up as the defender of individual liberty against state power. And thus contemporary capitalism — often referred to by that overused buzzword, “neoliberalism” — is often equated in casual left discourse with the withdrawal of the state.

But in the works that developed neoliberalism as a category of left political economy, this is not how things are understood at all. Neoliberalism is a state project through and through, and is better understood as a transformation of the state and a shift in its functions, rather than a quantitative reduction in its size.…

The growth of the surveillance state … clearly makes up a central part of the neoliberal turn, and is not something ancillary to it.

Aside from Frase’s placing libertarians on the Right, this is good stuff. (Likewise, Wilentz explicitly places FFF on the Right, demonstrating either his poor research skills or his sense of humor.) Both the establishment Left and the establishment Right offer flawed package deals: the former’s consists in the welfare/warfare state, while the latter’s consists in the warfare/“free”-enterprise state. (Enterprise is not really free because the political environment is deeply corporatist.) In practice, the two are hardly different except for their rhetorical emphases. The point is to hold various constituencies in line by having them believe they must accept the whole package.

Neoliberalism is corporate statism, not the freed market. As Frase says, “it’s a state project through and through.” But contrary to Frase, libertarians (unlike most conservatives) know better than to conflate “contemporary capitalism” with “the withdrawal of the state,” although at times many libertarians talk as if they don’t. Otherwise, Frase gets it right. The welfare state, warfare state, and corporate state are of a piece. The government interventions needed to assist well-connected economic interests and to carry out world hegemony create permanent structural economic problems and hardships for the most vulnerable in society. To buy off the victims and reduce the chance of civil strife, the power elite builds an intrusive welfare bureaucracy designed to toss crumbs to the trapped population. In other words, the welfare state is a mechanism of social control made necessary by the corporate-welfare/warfare state.

So in the end, despite his errors and calumnies, Wilentz is right in a way he doesn’t know. One cannot critique the surveillance state without critiquing the rest of the existing political apparatus.

.

Sono quasi dieci anni che in Messico si combatte una guerra. La miscela composta da leggi antidroga e diffusione della droga in America ha promosso la nascita di cartelli fuorilegge che, come le bande dell’era proibizionista, usano la violenza per imporre il loro controllo sul traffico di droga. Nel 2006 la situazione fu esacerbata dalla decisione dell’allora presidente Felipe Calderón di lanciare l’Operazione Michoacán con l’intento di assicurare il controllo dello stato in quelle aree fino ad allora in larga parte cedute ai cartelli. Oppressi dalle forze dello stato, i cartelli cominciarono una campagna di terrore contro la popolazione locale mirata a scoraggiare la cooperazione con le autorità statali. Secondo molte fonti, anche le forze dello stato hanno usato le stesse tattiche.

Presa nel mezzo, la popolazione dello stato di Michoacán è insorta contro i suoi aguzzini, non con striscioni e slogan ma armi in mano, e ha messo in fuga gran parte del temibile cartello dei Cavalieri Templari. Ma i cartelli della droga non sono stati gli unici a temere la reazione dei cittadini armati: quando sono entrati nella città di Nueva Italia, nello stato di Michoacán, i vigilantes non si sono fermati ai Cavalieri Templari ma hanno disarmato anche la polizia locale, assumendosi così la responsabilità della sicurezza della città. Questi uomini sanno bene quali sono i loro nemici. Sanno per esperienza che il governo messicano, alimentato dalla corruzione e consumato dalla violenza, non è meglio dei cartelli, dai quali forse non differisce affatto.

È chiaro che anche il governo messicano capisce la minaccia che si ritrova davanti. Invece di cooptare le milizie cittadine come hanno fatto gli invasori americani con i gruppi iracheni insorti contro la brutalità dei combattenti islamisti, il governo messicano ha deciso di schiacciarli; e con buona ragione, dal suo punto di vista strategico. Implicitamente, e in alcuni casi esplicitamente, questi gruppi hanno ripudiato la pretesa fondamentale su cui si basa l’esistenza dello stato: l’offerta di sicurezza. Quando le sue legioni non riuscirono più a proteggere le province dagli attacchi e dalle razzie, l’impero romano cominciò a vedere la sua fine. Il governo messicano certamente capisce che se non può garantire la sicurezza dei suoi cittadini (ovvero, se non può tenere le pecorelle nel recinto) perde il diritto e la possibilità di tosarli e macellarli.

È evidente che per il governo messicano questi gruppi di autodifesa sono una minaccia molto più grave di quella che i cartelli della droga rappresentano, o anche solo desiderano rappresentare. Gli stati combattono chi vuole entrare in competizione con loro nello sfruttamento della popolazione, ma suppongono che gli sfruttati restino vittime passive. I cartelli, in questo gioco delle parti, possono rappresentare una minaccia per lo stato, ma cosa possono contro un’insurrezione popolare? È questo che mina il loro gioco.

Il mutuo soccorso non è soltanto aiuto reciproco, anche se questo è ovviamente un aspetto importante e fondamentale. Il mutuo soccorso serve a mostrare ai padroni che non abbiamo più bisogno di loro, che possiamo cavarcela benissimo senza elemosinare le loro briciole. Quando le amministrazioni cittadine cercano di impedire che si dia da mangiare ai vagabondi, quando il governo americano interviene per tenere alti i costi dell’assistenza sanitaria, quando le autorità locali fanno di tutto per impedire la produzione locale di beni alimentari, quando la FDA (l’ente americano che si occupa della sicurezza degli alimenti e dei farmaci, es) interviene per impedire alla gente di comprare latte crudo prodotto localmente, e quando l’esercito messicano e la polizia federale cercano di schiacciare le forze di autodifesa dei cittadini, non stanno solo applicando sprezzantemente leggi stupide e antiquate. Stanno cercando di mantenerci atomizzati e in condizioni di dipendenza. Mutuo soccorso non è soltanto aiutarsi tra fratelli e sorelle. È il terrore dei nostri padroni.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

AGORIST CLASS THEORY [PDF]: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis By Wally Conger

Foreword
Introduction
The Failure of Marxism
The Marxist Appeal
Precursors to Marxist Class Theory
Marxist Classes
The Agorist Critique of Marxist Class Theory
Libertarian Class Analysis
Radical Libertarian Class Analysis
Agorist Class Theory
Agorist Solutions for Marxist Problems
Appendix: Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973)

Although today’s academics largely credit the doctrine of class conflict to Marx and Engels, historian Ralph Raico has for many years advanced the 19th Century classical liberal exploitation theory of Comte and Dunoyer as a much superior, more correct precursor to the Marxist class model. However, Konkin begins his examination of class theories much earlier than Comte-Dunoyer or Marx. He wrote:

Rome had three citizen classes and a fourth alien class written into its legal codes. Medieval Europe continued the concepts and much of the rest of the world had its versions. The upper class was the nobility, that is, the royalty and aristocracy, who controlled the land and directed its resources. The lower class were those who worked that land, peasants, serfs, villeins, etc. Most people fit in the lower class but those that fit in neither were, at least in numbers, at least as numerous as the upper class. Many were merchants, and as they turned villages into towns and then large, powerful cities, they were given the term Middle Class or terms meaning city-dweller: burger, bourgeois, etc.

Enter Comte, Dunoyer, and the rest of the “French school.” But we will get to libertarian (and agorist) class theory later.

First…Karl Marx.

Recently Ezra Klein pointed out (“What liberals get wrong about single payer,” Washington Post, January 13) that single-payer healthcare wouldn’t solve the problem of America having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. American health insurance premiums aren’t so high because of the overhead cost or profit of insurance companies, but because of the price of service delivery itself. The private insurance industry is an uncompetitive cartel, to be sure. But next to the almost 300% price markup on an MRI in the U.S. compared to France, or the 2000% markup on a drug under patent, the cost of insurance is almost nothing.

In response, Professor Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton added that a single-payer system wouldn’t work in the U.S. because it would be controlled by the corrupt culture of the service deliverers (“Is the U.S. too corrupt for single-payer healthcare?” Washington Post, January 16). “Medicare is a large insurance company whose board of directors (Ways and Means and Senate Finance) accept payments from vendors to the company. In the private market, that would get you into trouble.” Basically, the prices Medicare-for-all paid for healthcare services would be set by the healthcare providers and reflect their institutionalized monopoly culture.

All too often, when well-meaning people say a particular need should be a “basic human right,” what that means is that the average person gets that need for “free” — but they get it as defined by the authoritarian institutions and professional priesthoods that deliver that service. The nationalization and public financing serve mainly to lock in that institutional culture permanently, and make it difficult at best for the individual to escape that institutional model of service whether they actually want it or not.

A common theme in the work of Ivan Illich was the provision of services in all aspects of life by bureaucratic, hierarchical institutions with high overhead business models and the delivery of actual services by authoritarian professional priesthoods.

“Many students … intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance ….  [T]he more treatment there is, the better are the results …. The student is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new …. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.”

If you want an illustration of the total gestalt of the kinds of services delivered by such institutions, with their mission statements, Weberian work rules and accounting systems which define the consumption of resources as “value,” just compare the proprietary, institutionally designed “office productivity software” the IT department makes you use at work with platforms and utilities like Open Office that people willingly choose for themselves at home.

I once saw an activist critic of agribusiness on C-SPAN describing the process by which the USDA created the “Food Pyramid”; it was basically negotiated by a committee made up of representatives of Big Cereal Grains, Big Meat, Big Dairy, ad nauseam.

We have “free” education through grade 12 as a basic human right in the U.S. And what is it? A system set up for processing, grading and sorting human raw material into an input for corporate HR departments. The first statewide public school systems were set up in New England because  mill owners needed hands who’d been taught to be punctual, line up on command, eat and pee at the sound of a bell, and cheerfully obey instructions from an authority figure behind a desk. As a majority of people moved into white collar jobs, this basic function persisted — with the additional task of schooling students to prioritize tasks set for them by an authority figure over their own self-directed interests, and to regard as a trivial “hobby” anything not assigned by a boss.

The proper solution to the crisis resulting from enormously expensive healthcare is not to leave the expensive business model in place and then finance it with tax money, but to cause its price to implode to affordable levels by removing all the state-enforced monopolies and institutional frameworks that make it so expensive. Imagine a society where one of Pfizer’s $10 pills cost fifty cents, an MRI was $250, outpatient treatments and tests were covered by $70/month dues at a cooperative clinic, and catastrophic insurance was $50/month. That’s what we’d have if corporate-state collusion and monopoly were replaced by competitive markets and horizontal cooperation.

Before you make something “free,” think long and hard; you may also be making it compulsory.

We had a few interesting Spanish-lang pickups between December 2013 and January 2014:

The translation for Sheldon Richman’s “The Pope Dabbles in Economics”, was picked up by El Librepensador, an independent online newspaper from Spain.

The same newspaper picked up the translation for Tom Knapp’s “Privacy 2014: The Fable of the Hoarder”, and “Privacy 2014: Scroogled?”.

These three pieces, as well as the translation for Tom Knapp’s “2013: One Era Ends, Another Begins” were also picked up by Before It’s News, which publishes our English-lang material quite regularly, so it’s interesting to see it publishing our Spanish translations too.

And last but not least, the blog of El Libertario, a prominent Venezuelan anarchist newspaper, published the translation for Kevin Carson’s ““Privatization” or Corporatism?”, as well as my “Patriarchy on Steroids: The Case of Venezuela’s Plastic Surgery Fever”.

We’re starting 2014 with a renewed effort in Spanish translation, with a commitment to post at least four translations of Op-ed pieces per month, and building a list of contacts of Spanish-lang mainstream media contacts that we will cultivate relationships with.

¡Apoya a C4SS!

¡Salud!