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'Agorism' is an anarchist political philosophy founded by Samuel Edward Konkin III and characterized by proponents as left-libertarian. The goal of agorists is a society in which all "relations between people are voluntary exchanges — a free market."^[1]. The term comes from the Greek word "agora" meaning "open marketplace". Ideologically, it is a term representing a revolutionary type of free market anarchism.^[2] The characteristic distinguishing it from other forms of market anarchism is its strategic emphasis on "counter-economics" - untaxed "black" market activity.
The seminal and definitive treatise, Konkin's New Libertarian Manifesto, was published in 1980. However, the philosophy was presented fictionally previously in J. Neil Schulman's novel ''Alongside Night'' in 1979. He was inspired to portray Konkin's ideas in fictional form by the example of Ayn Rand's proto-libertarian novel, ''Atlas Shrugged'', and SEK3 wrote an afterword 'How Far Alongside Night?' for the 1987 Avon paperback edition of ''Alongside Night''."
Agorists are propertarian market anarchists who consider that property rights are natural rights deriving from the primary right of self-ownership and are not opposed in principle to collectively held property if individual owners of the property consent to collective ownership by contract or other voluntary mutual agreement. Thus, agorism can be considered a type of anarcho-capitalism.^[3] Agorists consider their ideas to be an evolution and superation of those of Murray Rothbard. They may describe themselves as anarcho-capitalist or left libertarian, though the latter is non-standard usage - by "left" they mean revolutionary rather than socialist. Konkin describes agorists as "strict Rothbardians...and even more Rothbardian than Rothbard."^[4]
Strategically, agorists are advocates or conscious practitioners of counter-economics (peaceful black and grey markets). Agorism advocates achieving a market anarchist society through advocacy and growth of the underground economy or "black market" — the "counter-economy" as Konkin put it — until such a point that the State's perceived moral authority and outright power have been so thoroughly undermined that revolutionary market anarchist legal and security enterprises are able to arise from underground and ultimately suppress government as a criminal activity (with taxation being treated as theft, war being treated as mass murder, ''et cetera'').

Contents

Early publications

Counter-economics as revolutionary theory

Views on property

Three types of capitalists

Political action

See also

Notes

External links

Early publications

J. Neil Schulman, managing editor of Konkin's magazine ''New Libertarian'' at the time of its first publication in 1979, first promoted the philosophy of Agorism in his novel ''Alongside Night'', which he began writing in 1974, when he was an editor for SEK3's magazine, ''New Libertarian Notes''. On their cross-country automobile trip from New York to California in August 1975, Konkin and Schulman outlined a book to be co-authored by them titled ''CounterEconomics''. When the outline and sample chapters for ''CounterEconomics'' failed to achieve a contract with an advance from a major publisher, Schulman went back to work finishing ''Alongside Night'' while Konkin devoted his energies to his own magazine publishing before eventually writing ''The New Libertarian Manifesto'' and ''An Agorist Primer'', scheduled to be published by Victor Koman's KoPubCo, which published the most recent edition of ''The New Libertarian Manifesto''. Before his death Konkin completed a manuscript for ''CounterEconomics'' which is also scheduled to be published by KoPubCo.

Counter-economics as revolutionary theory

According to a short summary of the agorist conception of market anarchist revolution, "''Agorist Revolution in a Nutshell''" from Agorism.info^[5]:

Views on property

By preferring the term "free market" agorists feel they are not bound by the implications of the term "capitalism". Government-favored corporations are viewed by agorists to link the illegitimacy of the state to many such businesses. State restrictions that limit liability on corporations are believed to corrupt those businesses such that the upper management acts irresponsibly with corporate assets. For example, if such businesses excessively pay executives and are then unable to meet contractual debts, many state laws protect the wages of those responsible for the bankruptcy. Agorists argue that liability cannot simply disappear by act of government and so legitimate business will always have managers or owners who will be held responsible for any actions taken.
Agorists have been divided on the question of intellectual property rights in that Konkin wrote the article "Copywrongs" in opposition to the concept and Schulman countered Konkin's arguments in "Informational Property: Logorights." While Konkin opposed state copyright and patent laws as an illegitimate monopoly, as did Benjamin Tucker before him, Schulman argued that the material identity displayed by an original creation could be owned as an exclusive natural property right, thus not allowing use or copying without a contract from the property's owner. His argument was that 'if a thing can be copied, then it is a thing' -- thus, as a thing, that which is being copied can be held as an exclusive property right.
Agorists may promote and argue for reconciliation between writings by authors as different as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and David Friedman in part by acknowledging terminological differences, most evident by the word "property" itself.

Three types of capitalists

Many agorists, like all anarcho-capitalists, refer to the free market as ''capitalism''. However, according to Konkin, agorists make a 3-part distinction between participants in capitalism.

'entrepreneur[6] or venture capitalist'	'non-statist capitalist'	'pro-statist capitalist'
(good)	(neutral)	(bad)
innovator, risk-taker, producer the strength of a free market	holders of capital not necessarily ideologically aware "relatively drone-like non-innovators"	"the main Evil in the political realm"

Konkin claimed that anarcho-capitalists tend to conflate the first and second types, and implies that "Marxoids and cruder collectivists" conflate all three. ^[7]

Political action

Agorists tend to oppose voting and political participation, and at least do not believe that such could ever be an effective means to bring about a free society. They support education and direct action, with a particular focus on counter-economics.

See also

★ Economic secession

★ Individualist anarchism

★ Mutualism

★ Geolibertarianism

Notes

1. Konkin, Samuel Edward. New Libertarian Manifesto
2. ''Agorism is revolutionary market anarchism.'' Agorism.info
3. Agorism satisfies standard definitions of anarcho-capitalism, including the one in the anarcho-capitalism Wikipedia article. For a discussion, see Discussion on Agorism vs. Anarcho-Capitalism.
4. "Interview With Samuel Edward Konkin III"
5. http://agorism.info/
6. Note that an entrepreneur in this instance is not necessarily a capitalist.
7. ''Interview with Samuel Edward Konkin III''.

External links

★ Agorism.info

★ Agorist Action Alliance (A3)

★ ''The New Libertarian Manifesto''

★ Interview With Samuel Edward Konkin III

★ http://127.0.0.1:8888/SSK@Ly3m~RoTy6qxyGMYTKyziSmAPb8PAgM,88PHE2a2FK2kYfxGUpbnJg/MLL/5// — You must be running Freenet '0.5' for this link to work.