#Samuel Konkin

[volunteerismandanarchy]

First proposed by American libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin III, sometimes known as SEK3, Agorism is a libertarian social philosophy that advocates the elimination of coercion in society with the goal of ensuring that all relationships between people are voluntary exchanges. This article will explore agorists’ main beliefs, paying particular attention to Samuel Edward Konkin III’s New Libertarian Manifesto (1980) and An Agorist Primer (2008).

[monikeroboogie]

Agorism, a type of anarchism, the Austrian school of economics, and mutualism are all different schools of thought that have some similarities and differences. Here is a brief explanation of each one:

Agorism is a social philosophy that advocates creating a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, engaging with aspects of nonviolent revolution. It was first proposed by American libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin III in the 1970s. The term “agorism” comes from the Greek word “agora,” which refers to an open area in a polis (city-state) for assemblies and markets. Agorists oppose any form of taxation or regulation by the state, as they believe that these are forms of theft and violence that undermine voluntary exchange and individual liberty. Agorists support counter-economics as a way to challenge the legitimacy and authority of the state and create alternative forms of social organization based on mutual aid and cooperation.

The Austrian school of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result primarily from the motivations and actions of individuals and their self-interest. The Austrian school originated in Vienna with the work of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and others. The Austrian school opposes any form of central banking or fiat money, as they believe that money is only a medium of exchange that derives its value from its scarcity and durability. The Austrian school supports free markets as the best way to allocate resources efficiently and promote human welfare.

Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought and economic theory that advocates for workers’ control of the means of production, a market economy made up of individual artisans and workers’ cooperatives, and occupation and use property rights. Mutualists oppose all forms of economic rent, profit and non-nominal interest, which they see as relying on the exploitation of labor. Mutualists seek to construct an economy without capital accumulation or concentration of land ownership. They also encourage the establishment of workers’ self-management, which they propose could be supported through the issuance of mutual credit by mutual banks, with the aim of creating a federal society. Mutualism has its roots in the utopian socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. It first developed a practical expression in Josiah Warren’s community experiments in the United States, which he established according to the principles of equitable commerce based on a system of labor notes. Mutualism was first formulated into a comprehensive economic theory by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who proposed the abolition of unequal exchange and the establishment of a new economic system based on reciprocity.

[libertadenes]

Réplica a Rothbard — Samuel Edward Konkin III

https://libertades.medium.com/r%C3%A9plica-a-rothbard-samuel-edward-konkin-iii-233fde8efbaf

[nicklloydnow]

Nuclear Weapons:

Proliferation or Monopoly?

Bertrand Lemennicier

“The problem of nuclear proliferation is an old one, dating when the United States used nuclear weapons on Japan. The problem resurfaces each time a new nation develops nuclear weapons: the Soviet Union in 1949, the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1962, and China and India in 1974. Israel claims to have nuclear weapons; Brazil, South Africa, and Argentina could but have stopped development; and Iran, Iraq, and probably others (e.g., North Korea) have expressed the desire to have them.

If nuclear weapons in the hands of governments present a real or perceived threat of intrusion or invasion among their neighbors, we can expect smaller nations to move to protect their territory and political independence through nuclear weapons production or acquisition. The French government used this argument against the American nuclear program when Charles De Gaulle came to power in 1945. At the same time, technological and political changes have reduced the cost of acquiring nuclear weapons. Further, technological progress should make possible the miniaturization of these weapons. Small organizations could someday have access to them. This possible proliferation is currently considered a curse, not a blessing. Why? Mainly because everyone fears that such a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction combined with advanced means for their delivery intensities "the problem of ensuring global security," as Dagobert Brito and Michael Intriligator wrote recently in Economic Affairs.” (pages 127-128)

“IS NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION A BLESSING?

Yes it is. Why? Because things that are good for us are good for others. The terror equilibrium was a guarantor of peace in Europe during the cold war. Without it, the Soviets might have been tempted to invade Europe. When there are no nuclear weapons there are classic wars, which can result in massacres comparable to those seen with the use of conventional weapons in the world wars. The Iran/Iraq war is a case in point: If both sides had had nuclear weapons, they might have hesitated to enter the conflict, saving millions of lives.

Possession of nuclear weapons by all players is a good and not a bad. Indeed, the more countries possess such dissuasive weapons, the wider will be the territory of peace and stability as experienced in Europe throughout the cold war. There have to be serious reasons to prohibit certain countries from owning such means of dissuading potential aggressors.

This sort of support of nuclear arms proliferation is natural for economists but heretical for noneconomists. The countries who are members of the nuclear club form a cartel that is looking to protect its monopoly in respect to other countries. They even use violence in order to prevent countries they do not like from obtaining nuclear technology. If nuclear weapons reduce the possibility of armed conflicts, i.e., protect human lives and territory from external invaders and violence, it means nuclear weapons possession is efficient.

(…)

This point of view is increasingly shared by Western military strategists, many of whom believe countries willing to obtain such weapons should be helped and not considered outlaws. An article by J. Fitchett in the International Herald Tribune notes this change in opinion among military advisers. But Fitchett claims that if proliferation prevails, the risk of conflict increases due to everyone's inability to control everyone else's dissuasion. Pentagon experts note that when communication between the USSR and the U.S. was limited, it minimized provocative behavior. Fitchett continues: With territories like Asia and the Middle East, nationalistic passion and irrational behavior are reality. Those leaders frequently are autocratic and are ready to destroy their countries in a nuclear conflict just to satisfy their interests or territorial appetites. Even though the 1991 Iraq conflict showed the opposite (Saddam Hussein did not dare use chemical weapons under the nuclear threat of Israel and the U.S.), we cannot extrapolate this to a world where nuclear weapons are commonplace. We should not forget that nuclear conflict is not local and it can affect, as did the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, uninvolved third parties. This argument is not new - it is similar to the one used by French medical doctors, who in the name of protecting consumers are impeding the sale of drugs in supermarkets. Another argument holds that competition in airline services leads to an increase in accidents due to airlines' failing to invest sufficiently in safety under the pressure of competition. This has proven to be false. All defenders of monopolies and cartels use such arguments including the one concerning nuclear weapons.” (pages 138 - 140)

[witchpunkboy]

ATTN: AGORISM IS NOT RIGHT-WING

After seeing Hans-Herman Hoppe in the agorism tag, I feel it’s time to end the “debate”, which is not really a debate but simply intentional ignorance on the part of ancaps.

So I am here to, once again, shut that shit down. With quotes and shit so that people who didn’t understand it the first time.

AGORISM IS LEFT-LIBERTARIAN

A link in which Samuel Edward Konkin III, the originator of agorist philosophy, makes the claim several times: http://www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/software/konkin-interview.html

“Rothbard decided that we (the original LP radical caucus, who left the LP as the New Libertarian Alliance, and then promptly went Underground to build the Counter-Economy) were, using Marxist terminology, the Ultra-Left Adventurists and Left Sectarians. Some who remained close to him called me the Trotsky of the Movement. So it became natural to refer to us as the Libertarian Left in that context.” -Interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III, Daniel Burton 

“Konkin stands out in his insistence that libertarianism rightly conceived belongs on the radical left wing of the political spectrum. His Movement of the Libertarian Left, founded as a coalition of leftist free marketers, resisted the association of libertarianism with conservatism. Further positioning it on the left, agorism embraces the notion of class war and entails a distinctly libertarian analysis of class struggle and stratification.“ -David S. D’Amato, “Black-Market Activism: Agorism and Samuel Edward Konkin III”

AGORISM IS ANTI-CAPITALIST

“Capitalism is state rule by and for those who own large amounts of capital…” -Samuel Konkin III, “Bad Capitalists Good Entrepreneurs”

“Sometimes the terms ‘free enterprise’ and ‘capitalism’ are used to mean ‘free market’. Capitalism means the ideology (ism) of capital or capitalists. Before Marx came along, the pure free-marketeer Thomas Hodgskin had already used the term capitalism as pejorative; capitalists were trying to use coercion - the State - to restrict the market. Capitalism, then, does not describe a free market but a form of statism [...]” -Samuel Konkin III (again), “An Agorist Primer” (p. 30)

“However, seeking to escape the state’s regulation is not the only goal to our agorist and counter-economic strategy. The endgame is a stateless society where free people are not bound by the force and coercion of the parasitic state and corporate class.“ - Derrick Broze, Manifesto of the Free Humans (p. 20)

AGORISM IS ANTI-HIERARCHY

Where Konkin began: 

“In an agorist society, division of labor and self-respect of each worker-capitalist-entrepreneur will probably eliminate the traditional business organization - especially the corporate hierarchy, an imitation of the State and not the Market.” -Samuel Edward Konkin, New Libertarian Manifesto (p. 27)

“As for the Workers and Peasants, we find them an embarrassing relic from a previous Age at best and look forward to the day that they will die out from lack of market demand“ -Interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III, Daniel Burton

Where others followed: 

“It is true that agorists in general do not fancy “organization, hierarchy, leaders and followers, etc.”, which is a common preference among anarchists of all varieties. ... [T]hey realize that the limited options for a child, i.e. working in a sweat shop or becoming a prostitute, are not the result of the market but of political institutions. The choice in itself may be easy, but the context certainly isn’t. The person making the choice is subjected to political oppression through the unavailability of choices due to political regulation, rule, and coercive institutions.“ -Per Bylund, “Responding to Klein and Rothbard on Agorist Organization”

“Even Konkin couldn’t help but notice the exploitative nature of corporate hierarchy, believing it to be some of the lasting remains of feudalism and that if the individual were truly respected, bosses would slowly become a thing of the past. In the truly freed-market, labor unions would be allowed to operate just as any voluntary association and groups like the IWW show us a way to unionize without appealing to the state for favors.“ - Logan Marie Glitterbomb, “Toward an Agorist-Syndicalist Alliance

Agorism is not “ancap lite”. It is not “anarcho-capitalism” with bitcoin. It is a separate, unique, and well-noted section of left-wing anti-capitalist market anarchism, and it has been from day one.

In essence, if you are a right-wing libertarian claiming the agorist label, and are distressed by all the “left-wing entryism”, they’re not the source of the entryism.

You are.

[howieabel]

Micro and macro are terms that come from the current Economic System. While Counter-Economy is only part of agorism (until the State has left), agorism includes both the Counter-Economy representing practice and Libertarianism representing theory. Now, since the theory includes an awareness of the large-scale consequences of counter-economic practice, I will try to use the word agorist in the macro sense and the word counter-economic in the micro sense. But since this division is ambiguous in itself, you may exchange terms.

Samuel Edward Konkin lll or SEK3 in The Neolibertarian Manifesto

[asightsodivine]

"It is difficult to imagine how we could have a free society — should we wish it — without a free market."

- Samuel Edward Konkin III (An Agorist Primer)

[beinglibertarian]

Did ‘Ready Player One’ Give Us A Model To Shrink The State?

Many libertarians have pontificated about the best way to reach a society of self-ownership and free markets. The most conventional route has been that of the Libertarian Party which seeks to get elected officials that will pass legislation to gradually shrink the size of government; while the counter to this, agorism, as proposed by Samuel Edward Konkin III, seeks to starve the beast of the state by participating in black markets as to avoid taxation and regulation.

Both solutions seek to work within the current system of society to enact change, but not all libertarians see this model as being conducive. They believe that the system cannot be be transformed quickly enough so as to produce real change within their lifetimes, so they have resorted to the role of a blacksmith, by building a new nation from the ground up in order to accomplish the libertarian goal.

Most covered in the press are three such attempts: the settlers of the uninhabited strip of land between Croatia and Serbia called Liberland, Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Institute, and Roger Ver’s Free Society. In the most Lockean sense, Liberland utilized homesteading to attempt to create a “Free Republic” nation out of unoccupied land emerging between Croatia and Serbia’s border disputes. The 7 kilometer-long country has not been officially recognized by its neighboring countries, which claim that Liberland’s president has no legal basis for claiming the land.

The Seasteading Institute has run into its own difficulties, as a once-promising agreement with French Polynesia fell through earlier this year putting a stopper in front of the envisioned floating nation. Ver’s organization claims on its website that it’s gained more enthusiasm than expected, but due to non-disclosure agreements, they can’t publish which nations they have begun negotiations with to buy land for a libertarian country.

But the frontier that hasn’t been considered to create this society is the digital landscape, an idea that was demonstrated to me by the blockbuster Ready Player One. In the film, a futuristic dystopian Earth completes all of their business and pleasure on a virtual reality video game called “The Oasis”. The digital world is the ultimate bastion of freedom as anyone can change their appearance at will and do anything they desire.

What’s interesting about the film is the lack of police or a governing agency within the Oasis, while the outside world contains them. Even with police in the real, they seem to be frugally employed since most people in the Oasis have a separate identity, so finding someone who committed a wrong is much more difficult. But what truly makes the movie a model for a potential stateless or limited state society is that the game’s currency, simply called ‘coin’, has replaced the dollar as the world’s primary money.

Because of everyone’s dependence on the game to have meaningful interactions and communicate, coin is used to purchase in-game weapons, skins, and vehicles, but it is also used to acquire real world items. Since the game has the player lose all of their coin and items when they die, voluntary interactions are essential.

Many players test their might by going to Planet Doom where they acquire coin and items from defeating other players, but no one is forced to participate in the violence and there are just as many players that get coin through transactions. One of the main characters sells custom vehicles like the Millennium Falcon and the Starship Enterprise.

Ready Player One gives libertarians another model within the vein of starting a new nation that could overcome the oppressive state. Social media has already reached the point where it is nearly an essential part of life and it is redefining how people develop friendships, networks of professionals and deliver information.

Through Facebook, I have been able to volunteer for Larry Sharpe’s campaign for Governor of New York, even though I live in Missouri. I have started a writing and journalism career from the comforts of my home, without having met in person any of my editors or fellow contributors. Some might say that it’s crazy to live in a digital reality, but I argue that the world has already reached that point.

The first time I read Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun, I thought that the inhabitants of that world were crazy for never interacting in person and only communicating through holograms that appeared in their homes; but the story perfectly describes how I interact with most libertarians, minus the physical agony that the citizens of Asimov’s story felt when confronted with one’s physical presence.

Virtual reality is potentially the next bastion of libertarianism that falls into the same vein as those trying to create a new country. The difference is that the digital realm is much more accessible to everyone than would be moving to Liberland, the floating nations envision by seasteaders or wherever Free Society purchases land. There will be no need for passports or government permission to enter the electronic libertarian utopia, only access to an internet-capable device and a desire to be free.

The post Did ‘Ready Player One’ Give Us A Model To Shrink The State? appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[volunteerismandanarchy]

Right-Libertarianism is oxymoronic. The free market is always leftist.

Samuel Edward Konkin III

[shoppingfordeals]

An Agorist Primer by Samuel Edward III Konkin (English) Hardcover Book Free Ship $27.05

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&toolid=10039&campid=5337702801&item=391356825851&vectorid=229466 An Agorist Primer by Samuel Edward III Konkin (English) …

[mervekaratas]

Agorizm

Samuel Edward Konkin III tarafından kurulmuş olan ve serbest piyasa anarşizmini benimseyen siyasi ideolojidir. Konkin agorizmi New Libertarian Manifesto'da açıklar.

Manifestonun ilk bölümünü devletçiliğin tenkidi oluşturur. Konkin burada zorlamaya dayalı yaptırımı verimsiz ve ahlaksız ilan eder. Thomas Szasz'ın karşıt psikolojisine atıfta bulunur. Kademecilik ve minarşizm gibi akımları yozlaşmış entelektüel kastın tepkileri olarak tanımlar. Partiarşi aleyhtarlığını belirtir.

İkinci aşamada Konkin, agorizmin hedefi üzerinde durur. "Özgür bir toplum neye benzer?" sorusunu sorar. Şimdiye kadar tasarlanan en özgür toplumun Robert Lefevre'inki olduğunu iddia eder. Yani Konkin'in idealindeki toplum, tüm ilişkilerin gönüllü mübadelelere (serbest pazar) dayandırıldığı bir toplumdur.

Konkin bunun söylendiği kadar basit olamayacağını bilir ve manifestosunda Thomas Jefferson'ın meşhur "Ebedi ihtiyat hürriyetin bedelidir." vecizesini alıntılar. Olası saldırganlıklara karşı asgari bir öz savunma bilgisinin herkes için gerekli olacağını vurgular lakin her koşulda kendisini savunamayacak birileri (çocuklar gibi) olacağından da bunun her sorunu çözmeyeceğini not eder. Pasifist olmamayı bilinçli olarak seçenlerin savunulmaması gerektiğini söyler.

Şiddeti başlatan kişiye ne yapılacağı önemli bir sorudur. Manifestoda, hak ihlallerinin çözümlenebilmesi için bir yargıç, adil tanık veya arbitratörün şart olacağı öne sürülür. Hüküm verildikten sonra icra gerekli olabilir ancak pasifistler için bu mecburi değildir. Sisteme katılmamak gibi bir seçenek vardır. Katılmayanlar kendi kendilerinin sigortası olmakla yükümlüdür.

Düşünür tahkim sistemini örneklendirmelerle açıkladıktan sonra karşı-iktisat kavramına geçer. Burada kara ve gri piyasalara yönelim aracılığı ile devlet kontrolüne meydan okuma vardır.

Bir sonraki bölümde ise agorist bir toplumda geleneksel iş organizasyonunun ortadan kalkacağı argümanı savunulur. Bunun da nedeni Konkin'in kurumsal hiyerarşiyi piyasanın değil devletin bir taklidi olarak yorumlamasıdır. Agorizmde pek çok özgür girişimci dernekler kurarak faaliyetlerini koordine edecektir ve bu piyasanın bir ihlali olmayacaktır.

Manifestonun sonlarına doğru ise agorizme giden basamaklar klasifiye edilir:

Faz 0: Dağınık liberteryenler veya karşı-iktisatçılar dönemi. Faz 1: Karşı-iktisatçıların artmasıyla liberter harekette ilk bölünmeler. Faz 2: Devletin agorizmin farkına varışı. Faz 3: Devletin krize sürüklenmesi. Baskılama dalgaları. Başarılı bir direniş gerçekleştiği takdirde devrim. Faz 4: Devletin çözülmesiyle beraber içinde hala devletçiler barındıracak olan agorist topluma geçiş.

Manifesto "Agora, anarchy, action" mottosu ile biter.

[libertadenes]

Konkin sobre la estrategia libertaria — Murray N. Rothbard

https://libertades.medium.com/konkin-sobre-la-estrategia-libertaria-murray-n-rothbard-ca6d3451f997

[nicklloydnow]

“There is one last hope for the United States. It does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the union organizing and strikes by workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, fast-food workers, hundreds of nurses in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Organized workers, often defying their timid union leadership, are on the march across the United States. Over four million workers, about 3% of the work force, mostly from accommodation and food services, healthcare and social assistance, transportation, housing, and utilities have walked away from jobs, rejecting poor pay along with punishing and risky working conditions. There is a growing consensus – 68% in a recent Gallup poll with that number climbing to 77% of those between the ages of 18 and 34 – that the only way left to alter the balance of power and force concessions from the ruling capitalist class is to mobilize and strike, although only 9% of the U.S. work force is unionized. Forget the woke Democrats. This is a class war.

(…)

The Democrats have been full partners in the dismantling of our democracy, refusing to banish dark and corporate money from the electoral process and governing, as Obama did, through presidential executive actions, agency “guidance,” notices and other regulatory dark matter that bypass Congress. The Democrats, who helped launch and perpetuate our endless wars, were also co-architects of trade deals such as NAFTA, expanded surveillance of citizens, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world and a raft of anti-terrorism laws such as Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that abolish nearly all rights, including due process and attorney-client privilege, to allow suspects to be convicted and imprisoned with secret evidence they and their lawyers are not permitted to see. The squandering of staggering resources to the military — $777.7 billion a year — passed in the Senate with an 89-10 vote and in the House of Representatives with a 363-70 vote, coupled with the $80 billion spent annually on the intelligence agencies has made the military and the intelligence services, many run by private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, nearly omnipotent. The Democrats long ago walked out on workers and unions. The Democratic governor of Maine, Janet Mills, for example, killed a bill a few days ago that would have allowed farm workers in the state to unionize. On all the major structural issues there is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.

(…)

The suffering and instability gripping at least half the country living in financial distress, alienated and disenfranchised, preyed upon by banks, credit card companies, student loan companies, privatized utilities, the gig economy, a for-profit health care system that has resulted in a quarter of all worldwide COVID-19 deaths—although we are less than 5% of the world’s population—and employers who pay slave wages and do not provide benefits is getting worse. Biden has presided over the loss of extended unemployment benefits, rental assistance, forbearance for student loans, emergency checks, the moratorium on evictions and now the ending of the expansion of the child tax credits, all as the pandemic again surges. The handling of the pandemic, from a health and an economic perspective, is one more sign of the empire’s deep decay. Americans who are uninsured, or who are covered by Medicare, often frontline workers, are not reimbursed for over-the-counter COVID tests they purchase. The Supreme Court – five of the justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote – also blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers. And on the horizon, fueled by the economic fallout from the pandemic, are large-scale loan defaults and another financial crisis. The worse things get, the more discredited the Democratic Party and its “liberal” democratic values become, and the more the Christian fascists lurking in the wings thrive.

As history has repeatedly proven, organized labor, allied with a political party dedicated to its interests, is the best tool to push back against the rich. Nick French in an article in Jacobin draws on the work of the sociologist Walter Korpi who examined the rise of the Swedish welfare state in his book “The Democratic Class Struggle.” Korpi detailed how Swedish workers, as French writes, “built a strong and well-organized trade union movement, organized along industrial lines and united by a central trade union federation, the Landsorganisationen (LO), which worked closely with the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden (SAP).” The battle to build the welfare state required organizing – 76% of workers were unionized – waves of strikes, militant labor activity and SAP political pressure. “Measured in terms of the number of working days per worker,” Korpi writes, “from the turn of the century up to the early 1930s, Sweden had the highest level of strikes and lockouts among the Western nations.” From 1900–13, as French notes, “there were 1,286 days of idleness due to strikes and lockouts per thousand workers in Sweden. From 1919–38, there were 1,448. (By comparison, in the United States last year, according to National Bureau of Economic Research data, there were fewer than 3.7 days of idleness per thousand workers due to work stoppages.)” There are a few third parties including The Green Party, Socialist Alternative and The People’s Party that provide this opportunity. But the Democrats won’t save us. They have sold out to the billionaire class. We will only save ourselves.

Unions break down political divides, bringing workers of all political persuasions together to fight a common oligarchic and corporate foe. Once workers begin to exert power and extract demands from the ruling class, the struggle educates communities about the real configurations of power and mitigates the feelings of powerlessness that have driven many into the arms of the neofascists. For this reason, capitulating to the Democratic Party, which has betrayed working men and women, is a terrible mistake.

(…)

Wall Street banks recorded record profits for 2021. As the Financial Times noted, they milked the underwriting fees from Fed-based borrowing and profited from mergers and acquisitions. They have pumped their profits, fueled by roughly $5 trillion in Fed spending since the beginning of the pandemic, as Matt Taibbi points out, into massive pay bonuses and stock buybacks. “The bulk of this new wealth—most—is being converted into compensation for a handful of executives,” Taibbi writes. “Buybacks have also been rampant in defense, pharmaceuticals, and oil & gas, all of which also just finished their second straight year of record, skyrocketing profits. We’re now up to about 745 billionaires in the U.S., who’ve collectively seen their net worth grow about $2.1 trillion to $5 trillion since March 2020, with almost all that wealth increase tied to the Fed’s ballooning balance sheet.”

Kroger is typical. The corporation, which operates some 2,800 stores under different brands, including Baker’s, City Market, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Foods Co., Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Gerbes, Jay C Food Store, King Soopers, Mariano’s, Metro Market, Pay-Less Super Markets, Pick’n Save, QFC, Ralphs, Ruler and Smith’s Food and Drug, earned $4.1 billion in profits in 2020. By the end of the third quarter of 2021, it had $2.28 billion in cash, an increase of $399 million in the first quarter of 2020. Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen made over $22 million, nearly doubling the $12 million he made in 2018. This is over 900 times the salary of the average Kroger worker. Kroger in the first three quarters of 2021 also spent an estimated $1.3 billion on stock buybacks.

“Kroger is the only employer for 86 percent of their workers, making it their sole source of earned income,” Economic Roundtable in a survey of Kroger workers found. “Working full-time to earn a living wage would require Kroger to pay $22 per hour for an annual living wage total of $45,760. The average annual earnings of Kroger workers, however, equal $29,655. This is $16,105 short of the annual income needed to pay for basic necessities required for the living wage. More than two-thirds of Kroger workers struggle for survival due to low wages and part-time work schedules. Nine out of ten Kroger workers report that their wages have not increased as much as basic expenses such as food and housing have increase. Since 1990, wages for the most experienced Kroger food clerks have declined from 11 to 22 percent (adjusted for inflation) across the three regions surveyed. Across the entire grocery industry, 29 percent of the labor force is below or near the federal poverty threshold.”

More than one-third (36%) of 10,000 employees at Kroger-owned stores in Southern California, Colorado, and Washington said they were worried about eviction. More than three-quarters (78%) are food-insecure. One in 7 Kroger workers faced homelessness in the past year. Nearly 1 in 5 (18%) Kroger employees said they hadn’t paid the previous month’s mortgage on time.

More than 8,000 unionized Kroger’s King Soopers employees went on strike on Jan. 12 in Colorado, demanding higher wages and better working conditions from the country’s largest grocery store chain and fourth-largest private employer.

(…)

All the openings in our democracy were the result of prolonged popular struggle. Hundreds of workers were murdered, thousands were wounded, tens of thousands were blacklisted in our labor wars, the bloodiest of any industrialized country. Abolitionists, suffragists, unionists, crusading journalists and those in the anti-war and civil rights movements opened our democratic space. These radical movements were repressed and ruthlessly dismantled in the early 20th century in the name of anti-communism. They were again targeted by the corporate elites following the rise of new mass movements in the 1930s. These popular movements, which rose again in the 1960s, moved us, inch by bloody inch, towards equality and social justice. Most of these gains made in the 1960s have been rolled back under the onslaught of neoliberalism, deregulation, and a corrupt campaign finance system, legalized by court rulings such as Citizens United, which allow the rich and corporations to bankroll elections to select political leaders and impose legislation. The modern incarnation of 19th-century robber barons, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, each worth some $200 billion, summon us to our radical roots.”

“Agorist and journalist Derrick Broze speaks often of the concepts of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal agorism’. Horizontal agorism is what most of us understand, traditionally, as agorism. It is the use of black and grey markets to out compete the state as outlined in SEK3’s The New Libertarian Manifesto and The Agorist Primer. Examples of such include unlicensed businesses, tax evasion, smuggling, drug dealing, harboring undocumented immigrants, gun running, squatting, and alternative currencies. Vertical agorism is focused on localism and self-sufficiency and is inspired by such books as Karl Hess’ Community Power. Such practice includes buying goods from farmers markets and community farms, rooftop gardening, personal and community use of solar power and aquaponic systems, community toolshares and skillshares, homesteading, urban farming, community protection networks, and free schools. While not all vertical tactics are strictly black or grey market activities (such as free schools and farmers markets), they are counter-economic nonetheless in that they challenge corporate and government monopolies and provide working alternatives that are much more libertarian in comparison.

So if not all activities have to strictly be black or grey to be considered counter-economic, then where does that leave such things as worker cooperatives and collectives or even classical wildcat unionism and newer forms of alt labor? Do these not challenge state and corporate power in significant ways, placing more power in the hands of the individual instead of coercive authorities? Rothbard himself pointed out that most, if not every, corporation rested on illegitimate property claims and therefore should be homesteaded by the workers – the wage earners whom Rothbard claimed that agorism could do nothing for – who invested their time, labor, and energy into running the day-to-day operations but is this not just a form of syndicalism?

Karl Hess advocated a combination of such tactics as a practicing agorist, both vertically and horizontally, and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a 100+ year old labor union that offers a refreshing challenger to the exploitative business union model of groups like the AFL-CIO while advocating syndicalist tactics. And such tactics do seem to compliment each other in theory and in practice, offering a significant challenge to state and corporate power, while also crossing ideological boundaries between free-market anarchists and social anarchists. In fact, many free-market libertarians aside from Hess have made such alliances with alt labor organizations and unions.

Consciously moving forward in building such alliances could prove to be quite advantageous. While agorists build alternatives to the white market within the black and grey markets, syndicalists could focus on challenging existing white market entities from the inside, eventually taking them over as Rothbard advocated. But it doesn’t have to stop there. Agorists should indeed advocate that syndicalists go even further. Once a white market business is successfully syndicalized, agorist-syndicalists should help transition the business into the agora. The newly collectivized business should eventually do what all good agorist businesses do: ignore state licensing regimes, refuse to pay taxes, engage in the use of alternative currencies, and generally disregard statist interference with their business dealings. They just successfully ousted the boss, why submit to yet another authority? They just got rid of the corporate cronies who became rich by stealing the fruits of their labor so then why let the state do the same through taxes?

For those who object to such claims and scream #notallbosses, I offer the following quote from Konkin:

“In an agorist society, division of labor and self-respect of each worker…will probably eliminate the traditional business organization – especially the corporate hierarchy, an imitation of the State and not the Market. Most companies will be associations of independent contractors, consultants, and other companies. Many may be just one entrepreneur and all his services, computers, suppliers and customers.”

Even Konkin couldn’t help but notice the exploitative nature of corporate hierarchy, believing it to be some of the lasting remains of feudalism and that if the individual were truly respected, bosses would slowly become a thing of the past. In the truly freed-market, labor unions would be allowed to operate just as any voluntary association and groups like the IWW show us a way to unionize without appealing to the state for favors.”

[witchpunkboy]

Konkin says I can be anticapitalist and have a for-crypto black market business in my basement, so... win win?

[bad-power-blog]

Rethinking Anarchist Tactics: A Solution

If you’ve read my last post on anarchist tactics, you are aware of some of the problems inherent in the organization and insurrectionary models of resistance. These problems may seem insurmountable, as they should, but there is another way: agorism.

Agorism is an anarchist tactic developed by Samuel Edward Konkin III. Put simply, the idea is to develop and expand black and grey markets until they reach such a size that they threaten the existence of the state. These markets have the potential to kill the state because they don’t contribute a single dollar to the state’s coffers via taxation. Without taxes, the state ceases to exist.

These markets may start out small at first, but as they are established, more people will join the counter-economy over time, as it can be very profitable. Eventually, if this is the path we take, we will see autonomous zones emerge, hubs of free association and counter-economic activity.

Once things hit the breaking point, the state will likely send in troops to crush the autonomous zones, but two things will stand in its way. For one thing, by this point the state will be considerably weakened, as large segments of the economy will be free from taxation. Second, unlike the anarchist tactics outlined in the first part of this series, agorism involves the development of a thriving, sophisticated counter-economy that will provide a backbone for resistance forces.

Many individualist anarchists are already active agorists, but social anarchists will probably have some reservations upon reading this. I will now try to settle a couple of the big issues they may have with this approach. For one thing, there’s the issue of the poor. How are working people supposed to participate in counter-economic activity? Well, the truth is that it’s pretty easy to be an active counter-economist, even without much overhead. Some of the hardest hurdles to jump through when starting a business are taxes and regulations, and neither of those things matter in the counter-economy. In fact, having the extra income can actually make life easier for the working poor, if we’re smart and careful about it.

Social anarchists might be uncomfortable with a market-based solution, so I’ll end this post with a few comments about that. There is nothing inherently exploitative about markets. Bossism is not a necessary feature of markets. If you’re okay with having anarchist bookstores, you should have no ethical reason to oppose agorism, a tactic that could put the state in its grave. Especially when, as I’ve demonstrated, it is our only viable option.

[bowsetter]

Agorism and Bitcoin: Free People Don’t Ask Maxine Waters for Permission

Anti-agorism Congressional Representative Maxine Waters still has misgivings about Facebook’s proposed Libra digital currency, even after meeting with Swiss government officials to discuss the tech last week. The sustained reservations echo the message of July’s open letter from the House of Representatives to Facebook, calling for a halt on Libra’s ongoing development. While many view regulation and careful legislative feet-dragging a troublesome necessity for crypto mainstreaming, agorists, anarchists, and other free marketeers see a critical problem: the tech is already here, and how we use it in non-violence is nobody else’s damn business.

Also Read: Mega Drug Pushers Johnson & Johnson Get Away While Peaceful Silk Road Is Destroyed

Intro to Agorism

Agorism is, quite simply, the free exchange of goods and services by individual, free market actors. News.bitcoin.com has previously reported on the philosophy, and this primer about Agorism and crypto is a good place to start for the agora-curious. Suffice to say that at its most basic form, agorism is the philosophy and practice of engaging in free market activity outside of the control or regulations of a state. Living one’s life in such a way, to such an extent as possible, that violent governments are ignored, counteracted, and rendered increasingly irrelevant. The word “agora” itself is a Greek term, meaning “open markets.” The hugely influential agorist activist, philosopher and author Samuel Edward Konkin III once said agorist counter-economics is:

The study or practice of all peaceful human action which is forbidden by the State.

The Problem With Regulation

One of the most misunderstood aspects of agorism, voluntaryism, and anarchism is the fact that chaotic violence and a lack of order are not what is being sought. Agorists want the same things any other sane person wants: better education, better healthcare, better opportunities, and more peace. What is being sought is logical order and voluntary interaction, governed not by sociopathic, economically inept politicians and religious beliefs like the “divine right to rule,” but by logic, science, and the natural reality of individual self-ownership. That is to say, each individual owns his or her own life and body, and by extension, the property legitimately acquired or created by that body and mind.

The regulation of cryptocurrencies by the state exists ostensibly to fight crime and terror. What is seen playing out in reality, however, is that the groups that are by far the largest financiers of terror and violence globally — governments — have labeled themselves “regulators,” and now stifle a technological revolution set to help free billions of people. Waters states, in her August, 25 official assessment of the meeting with Swiss officials:

While I appreciate the time that the Swiss government officials took to meet with us, my concerns remain with allowing a large tech company to create a privately controlled, alternative global currency. I look forward to continuing our Congressional delegation, examining these issues, money laundering, and other matters within the Committee’s jurisdiction.

It is interesting that the state Waters represents, the United States Federal Government, is the world’s leading money launderer, by most rational estimations. After all, what is the unlimited, systematic creation of debt for the benefit of an elite class, represented by pieces of paper and zeroes and ones in computers, but a gigantic scheme to launder financial power? Bitcoin presents a threat because these irresponsible economic practices are simply not possible within the protocol itself.

The United States Federal Government spends over $1.25 trillion on war, annually. There is an infestation of child porn users in the Pentagon and at NASA. The IRS pays people to spy on hardworking Americans, organizing letter threat campaigns to scare even law-abiding citizens into paying money they don’t owe. And these are the regulators “concerned” with crime?

The Biggest Roadblock for Inclusion of the Poor Is Government Regulation

Financial inclusion is a big buzz-phrase these days, especially with influential, mainstream-friendly projects like Libra. It sounds nice. Include the previously disconnected, unbanked, and impoverished in the exciting new “crypto revolution” where blockchain saves us all, ends world hunger, and wipes our asses for us on the way out. There’s just one problem: there’s no need for centralized regulators – only individual human action.

“Hey there, impoverished guy! Wanna get out of debt!? Just head on over to Facebook or Coinbase and create an account. Of course, you’ll have to wait a few weeks to a month for your passport photo to be …. what’s that? You don’t have a passport? Well, I’m sure that’s okay, just present some proof of resi … how’s that? You’re homeless? Oh. Well, not to worry. If you figure out how to pass the KYC/AML requirements, pretty soon you’ll be able to do business online, and send and receive crypto! Bye!”

A cheap smartphone and an internet connection. This is all that is currently needed to make and receive crypto through free trade. Private, P2P platforms like Local.bitcoin.com help make this possible. Introduce a little government, however, and everything becomes cumbersome, violent, and vexingly inconvenient and inhuman. Agorism says if it’s non-violent, trade it freely.

The Desperate IRS

Speaking of poor people, the IRS is understaffed and overworked. Currently flailing to finagle whatever paltry satoshi dust they can out of America’s pockets, over 46,000 of the agency’s employees were forced to work for free during the last government shutdown. Some of them got discouraged and decided not to go back to work at all. The agency has turned to fear-mongering letter campaigns and automation, sending out a series of AI-generated notices relating to supposed non-payment of crypto taxes. They’ve also sent out over 400,000 notices since February, 2018 about failure to report income which could result in the loss of one’s passport. Financial inclusion never sounded less inclusive.

Government Through the Lens of Agorism

“Free people don’t ask for permission.” The commonly repeated agorist bromide deserves fresh attention. In most people’s daily lives, it would be absurd to ask someone else for permission to do things like drive into town, go out for a pizza, or help a friend fix his car. Without payment to a small group of people calling themselves government, though, each of these activities can turn deadly.

When state agents force someone to halt and find they don’t have that special piece of plastic for driving, they can be kidnapped. Those who try to provide a service — say starting a pizza shop — are also not immune. Without the proper building permits and food service licenses (also costing a pretty penny, of course) an entrepreneur will be shut down, fined, and thrown in a cage if they don’t pay. Potentially killed, if they physically resist the kidnapping. Those who try to help a friend with auto repair might also be criminals, thanks to the protection of the state. In Sacramento County, CA and elsewhere, this is already the reality.

No Victim, No Crime

When someone’s neighbor smokes cannabis in their home, they are not violating the body or property of anyone. Going a few miles over the speed limit is not violent, either. Nor is selling tacos outside of a sporting event to willing customers. Nor is collecting rainwater. Neither is drinking raw milk. Generating one’s own electricity and not selling a surplus back to a political jurisdiction called a city is not a violent crime. Nor is refusing to pay taxes.

Critics of the agorist approach rightly are concerned that there must be some means by which to establish order in any given society. Anarchists, agorists, and voluntaryists agree. The prescribed methods are different. Where the Maxine Waters, Steven Mnuchins, and Donald Trumps of the world demand submission to their violence-based class system, agorists maintain we are all equal under the biological, metaphysical, immutable reality of individual self-ownership.

Decentralized rules can be set up for any group of property owners anywhere, based on these principles. As such, asking self-styled gods called politicians for permission becomes a laughable prospect, if the risk of disobedience were not so real. Yet, for some, freedom is well worth it, open letters and legislative scribbles from psychopaths be damned.

What is your opinion of the agorist philosophy? Let us know in the comments section below.

Op-ed disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the content. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article.

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