An Agorist Primer by SEK3

8/13/2019 An Agorist Primer by SEK3

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This PDF copy of An Agorist Primerwas created

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authentic electronic copy of the book by Samuel

Edward Konkin III.

Accept no substitutes! A paperback version will also

be available in Summer 2009.

ANAGORIST

PRIMER


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Samuel Edward Konkin III An Agorist Primer

2

Books by Samuel Edward Konkin III

Available from KoPubCo

An Agorist Primer

New Libertarian Manifesto

The Legend of Anarcho Claus

Forthcoming from KoPubCo

Rann Gold: Dragons Bane

CounterEconomics
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ANAGORIST

PRIMER

by

Samuel Edward Konkin III


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[PDF copy of KoPubCo]1st Edition, Dec. 2008

ISBN 10 0-9777649-4-X [of the hardback]

ISBN 13 978-0-9777649-4-5 [of the hardback]

Published by arrangement with the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re-produced, emitted, or transmitted in any form by any

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This book is dedicated to

Teny Rule Fisher, Thelma Rule, andJohn Fragnito, without whom this book

would not have happened.

Most of all, though, this book

is dedicated to my son,

Samuel Edward Konkin IV,

to whom I offer this blueprintfor liberty as his legacy.


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TABLEOFCONTENTS

PREFACE ..................................................................8

PUBLISHERSNOTE ....................................................9

INTRODUCTION........................................................10

CHAPTERONE: ECONOMICS .....................................14

CHAPTERTWO: APPLIEDECONOMICS .....................24

CHAPTERTHREE: COUNTER-ECONOMICS ................39

CHAPTERFOUR: APPLIEDCOUNTER-ECONOMICS ...46

CHAPTERFIVE: LIBERTARIANISM............................53

CHAPTERSIX: APPLIEDLIBERTARIANISM ...............59

CHAPTERSEVEN: AGORISM ....................................71

CHAPTEREIGHT: APPLIEDAGORISM ......................90

AFTERWORD............................................................99

ABOUTTHEAUTHOR ..............................................102

OTHERWORKSOFSEK3 ......................................103


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ANAGORIST

PRIMER


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PREFACE

I

deas evolve and grow. At some point, an idea con-

nects with so many other concepts that it becomes

central to a way of thinking an ideology.

At some state of an ideologys life, between its

birth and death, it reaches a level of maturity such

that someone is motivated to divert his efforts from

expanding it outward and upward and begins to

look downward. That is, the theoretician pauses to

pass on the knowledge to those not specializing in

theoretical development. Perhaps the theoreticianis reminded for whom he developed the ideology in

the rst place.

Agorism is a way of thinking about the world

around you, a method of understanding why things

work the way they do, how they do, and how they

can be dealt with howyou can deal with them.

Agorism was meant to improve the lot of everyone,not a chosen elite or unwashed underclass. Hence an

introductory work that presents ideas without going

through the long intellectual history and conict of

competing ideas that produced them. As the creator

of agorism, it is most incumbent on me rst to at-

tempt to reduce it to basic intelligibility. I hope my

efforts nd some small reward. Samuel Edward Konkin III


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PUBLISHERSNOTE

S

amuel Edward Konkin III wroteAn AgoristPrimer in 1986. A small number of Xerox

copies were circulated to investors in thehope that they would nance the publication ofa high-quality, hardcover edition. Though somemoney was raised, it proved insufcient to producethe book. Even though the photocopies bore textreading First Edition, it was meant to refer tothe proposed hardback edition. This, then the

book you hold in your hands is the true rstedition as SEK3 intended it.

An effort has been made to update the bookin order to keep it relevant, though none of thetimeless and timely agorist philosophy hasbeen altered. Such archaic terms as videotapesand cassettes have been replaced by DVDs and

downloads. Information about major wars since1986 have been added, staying we hope inthe spirit of SEK3s other analyses. Notice hasbeen taken of the collapse of Communism, broughtabout in no small part by Counter-Economics.

Any mistakes, failures to catch archaisms, orerrors of analysis added to the original text are

entirely the fault of the current editor and not ofthe late author. V.K.


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INTRODUCTION

A

gorism can be dened simply: it is thoughtand action consistent with freedom.Themoment one deals with thinking, act-

ing, consistency, and especially freedom,things get more and more complex.

Hold on to the virtue of consistency. The refusal tocompromise, to deceive oneself, to sell out or to berealistic created agorism. Consider being realistic.This usually implies that theory is ne for thinking,

but in practice one must deal with reality. Agoristsbelieve that any theory which does not describereality is either useless or a deliberate attempt byintellectuals to defraud non-specialists.

When someone urges you to be realistic, mayyou pick an agorist book to get the best descrip-tion you can nd of how agorism actually works.

If you want to nd books and articles that willfake reality for wishes, whims, fears, and spite,look for labels such as Liberal, Conservative,Socialist, Communist, Fascist, or worst ofall middle of the road and moderate.

Reality knows no moderation; it is all the way.One way of thinking came close to agorism

and is fairly well-known today; we will deal withLibertarianism later in some detail. An ideology


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of Liberty, it had to choose at one point between

consistency with reality and being the politics ofliberty. It chose the latter: the contradiction ofseeking political power over others to eliminatepolitical power over others.

Those who continued to seek liberty consis-tently and without the practical contradiction ofLibertarians became agorists. This is a second,

historical denition for you.Agorism is an ideology, then, but it is also a sci-

entic and denitely materialist way of thinking.It is not a religious view save that it believesabsolute freedom to be moral nor does it wishto displace anyones religious views unless theylead to slavery. Agorism wants no true believers

in the sense of blind followers. Like any scienti-cally based mode of thought, it will evolve as doesour understanding of reality. One who has faithin something proven false that was once a tenetof agorism is not an agorist.

Reality is our standard. Nature is our lawgiver.In a general sense, agorism is scientic in that

it bases itself on veriable observations aboutreality. But it is scientic in a specic sense aswell. It may be hard for chemists, physicists, andengineers to believe that a hard science was everdeveloped in elds such as economics and politicalscience; but the discovery of this science by me a hard-bitten theoretical chemist, cynical of soft

science led eventually through libertarianismto agorism.

The study of human action (praxeology)* pro-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology


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duced some repeatable observations deserving the

title of scientic law. The area of human actiondealing with exchanges between acting humans(catallactics)* covers the same area of thought thateconomics is supposed to cover, but often with verydifferent conclusions.

This kind of economics (sometimes called Aus-trian economics)* was used by speculators such

as Harry Browne and Doug Casey for investingin hard-money instruments, beating taxes, andsurviving when society around them is operatingon unreason and folly. It is that potent, a tool forsurvival amidst gloom and doom.

However, it can be more. By applying this economicunderstanding to all human action regardless of the

wishes, whims, fears, and spite of the most powerfulagency in society the State (coercive government) a new eld of theory dealing only with practicalaction emerges: Counter-Economics.

Finally, when libertarian theory meets Counter-Economics, what comes out in strict consistency,both external and internal is Agorism. This is

still another denition.And this is the denition with which I feel

most comfortable, the one that the thieves of theintellect nd hardest to pervert or steal:Agorismis the consistent integration of libertarian theory

*If this area of study appeals to you, by all means

go to the source: Human Actionby Ludwig Von Mises.Youll nd all the terms starred herein are derived anddened in detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallacticshttp://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=111http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=111http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallactics


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with counter-economic practice; an agorist is one

who acts consistently for freedom and in freedom.A basic understanding of agorism falls natu-

rally into four phases of integration or four stepsof learning. In addition to grasping the premisesinvolved, one should be able to apply them. Re-member always that agorism integrates theoryand practice. Theory without practice is game-

playing; taken seriously, it leads to withdrawalfrom reality, mysticism, and insanity. Practicewithout theory is robotic; taken seriously, it leadsto tilling barren soil and showing up for work atclosed factories. Perhaps it would help to think oftheory as wedded to practice where divorce leadsto ruin. Or the relationship could be viewed as

that between brain and stomach or mind and body:neither can survive without the other.

So four concepts and four applications leadnaturally to eight chapters.

The author and publisher welcome your ques-tions because they will indicate where we canclarify and improve subsequent editions.


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Chapter One

ECONOMICS

Economics is a dismal science. Those under-standing certain economic concepts protamboyantly. Economics is a tool corpo-

rations and governments use to control society.Those understanding economic concepts havetoppled governments that refuse to face the very

same concepts. Economics is a meaningless collegeexercise. Speculators understanding economicsmake millions of dollars and save others fromnancial ruin. Here is our problem: all the abovestatements are true.

If that makes you think theres an inconsistencyin the use of Economics, you are correct. With a

lower-case e, economics is the study of relationsbetween people involving goods and services. Witha capital E, Economics is an institution nancedmostly by government and its tax-privileged foun-dations. With foundation money, this institutioncontrols however imperfectly those whowould learn and teach economics at government

schools or private colleges.Maybe this appears to be a big deal made outof little; after all, is not most of chemistry and


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astronomy and mathematics also institutional-

ized? Imagine the case where only pro-governmentchemistry, conservative astronomy, or socialistbiology was taught and those who tried to teachstraight sciencewere vilied as crackpots. Fan-tastic? Lysenkos pseudo-biology was taught inthe Soviet Union because it was more in line withMarxist theory than was straight genetics. Cur-

rently, Man-Made Global Warming is approach-ing the status of state-approved climatology, withdissenters shouted down, de-funded, smeared asapologists for polluters, and even threatened withthe recision of their academic degrees.

Perhaps you will grant that government can useits control of schools and colleges to teach a twisted

version of economics. Could, then, better econom-ics be taught if government were improved? Theanswer is, not a chance! As you will see in Chap-ter Six, if people understood economics, coercivegovernment could not survive. (And uncoercivegovernment is a contradiction in terms.)

What we wish to accomplish in this chapter is

simply to give you a basic understanding of realeconomics. No, this is not just to help explain therest of this book; with even an elementary un-derstanding of economics, fewer con games candefraud you especially the high stakes, politi-cal kind.

Let us start with why people act economically.


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Value

Right down there at the very bottom, we be-gin. Human beings act. Why? Ludwig Von

Mises said it best: to remove felt unease. If youwere perfectly content, nothing and no one nagging at

you, and you knew that if you did nothing you couldcontinue to be content, would you move? Remember,moving from this state would increase unhappiness.Of course you wouldnt move. Even if you said youwould move to relieve boredom, you would be violatingthe hypothesis. You would be more bored by movingsince that is an increase in unhappiness.

Aha! Is that not a contradiction?you rightfullyask. Correct. And if an assumption leads to a con-tradiction, it is wrong. Our assumption was thatyou could achieve a state of ease; therefore, sucha human condition is impossible.

In reality, man always has reason to feel unease:to feed himself, clothe himself, shelter himself,

reproduce, and feed, shelter, and clothe others,amuse himself, and so on. Unease cannot be elimi-nated. It can, however, be reduced. It can also,unfortunately, be augmented.

If you seek to starve yourself or bore yourself,you increase your unease. Some actions you per-form achieve negative goals; some achieve positive

ones. Those which remove felt unease are values.If someone else has something that will remove

your unease but taking it will increase theirs, we


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have a conict in values. This conict in values

need not arise from direct confrontation. Supposeyou and another are offered a scrumptious dessert,and the other is dieting desperately. You value it;the other disvalues it.

Value is subjective. This simple insight, made byCarl Menger (teacher of Von Mises), revolution-ized primitive economics and cured many of the

problems plaguing the science since Adam Smith.Had Marx heeded Menger, socialism would have

been abandoned.Subjective valueleads to individualism. It also

explains so powerfully why people trade andit demolishes theories of exploitation. Beforesubjective value, Marx could look at the work of

Adam Smith who thought value arose from theamount of labor one put into producing something and see no productive role for anyone but labor-ers, concluding that all the others must be para-sites. There are parasites in our system, economicstells us, and we shall use our new understandingto ferret them out in the next chapter.

Finally, when people trade, they are acting toremove felt unease in both directions. You maygive up a smaller value for a larger but never theother way around voluntarily. If youre willingto let your brother work for you and pay him morethan hes worth, you know that this means, toyou, hes worth extra because hes my brother.

Youve still gained a greater value.If values were not subjective, why would anyone

trade? We would all value things equally and be


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(as far as this example is concerned) yet while you

traded your eleventh sheep for a coat and wouldnot have traded your tenth, you did trade bothyour twelfth and thirteenth sheep for a coat. Thisprinciple where you value each additional unitless and less is called marginal utility. (You areoperating at the margin and utility is an olderword for value.)

All sheep (and dollars) are not alike; marginalones are cheaper. Besides giving us an idea whichcan handle more in economics, and also help usto spot frauds such as tax redistribution (see nextchapter), marginal utility leads directly to thenext concept.

Division of Labor

Subjective value may lead us to think we wouldprefer producing some goods rather than oth-

ers, or transporting them, trading them, servingthem, or storing them. Yet it is marginal utilitywhich tells us why this specialization works. If I

produce ten cooked hamburgers an hour and youproduce twelve, and we happen to eat the same, itis obvious who has more surplus to trade and willbe eager to do so. I should check out other lines ofproductivity or move to a less desirable (at leasttoyou) location where I can compete.

This process, where we are led to specialize by

greater productivity and greater reward (value-seeking), is called division of labor. Von Misesspeculated that it was the glue holding society


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together; and if you think of society as bigger thana nuclear or extended family, he is right.

If Jane sings beautifully, and we do not, divisionof laboris why Imwriting this book, eatingyourhamburgers, and werelistening to Jane on the radio.

Basics

With such basic ideas as those about trade,exchange, goods and services that you

(hopefully) already brought with you to this dis-cussion, added on to the concepts of subjectivevalue, marginal utility, and division of labor, youare properly armed for understanding agorism.There is far more to economics and still more being

discovered and written about by the (all too few)right kind of economists.

Before moving on, there is one economic spe-cialty that deserves some extra attention. Sinceit is so much on everyones minds, you probablyguessed that it is money.

Money

Money is heavily mystied and its not hardto see why. A fool and his money are soon

parted is a truism nearly as old as money itself.If you can be confused as to what money is or howit works, you can be parted from it by those who

know what money is.Remember our sheep example? We called thewool coat a medium of exchangeto show the dif-


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to make it so. Nature would take care of it. Second,

third, and fourth choices might be used, but therst would be the standard by which the otherswere measured.

Such a substance has been known for millennia.Gold, and its close chemical relatives platinum,silver, and copper, remains the choice of a freemarket. Even in an unfree market, where money

is imposed by force against the will of traders (thatis, byat), gold remains the money of the under-ground economy and of the overseas economyworking around theat money.

Why at money exists at all and what it has todo with ination is an important topic in our nextchapter.

Value-Free Economics

So far we have avoided loaded terms such asfree market, competitive economy, free

trade, fair trade, and so on. The Austrianeconomists (Menger, von Mises, Eugen von Bhm-

Bawerk and their students) believed economicsshould be a science free of such terms, a value-free (wertfrei) science.

Science has values; try to engage in researchwithout a commitment to truth or an afnity forreality. Many people hold values that are impos-sible to achieve in reality and are frustrated

they hurt themselves. Many people seek to gainvalues by misrepresenting reality to others; whenthey are challenged, they accuse the exposers of


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holding different, competing values. Thus value-

free scientists including economists nd theycannot remain forever neutral in their ivory towers.

To the extent, though, that they try by keepingtheir own subjective values out of the way, they doaccomplish much. The scientic method works. Andbeing able to tell people that stealing from everyoneand then giving it back to them will make them

less well off is useful, not matter how unpopular.This is where the application of economics enters.


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Chapter Two

APPLIEDECONOMICS

Agorism is more than economics, but agoristthinking is impossible without that basicunderstanding. Just applying the basic

economics we have learned so far can sweepaway a lot of misconceptions and eliminate a lotof confusion about how the world works. We also

can deal with some of the misleading con jobs ofEconomics however, explaining why Econom-ics is so twisted will have to wait until we applylibertarianism later.

The Free Market

Agorism upholds the free market. To under-stand why, one first needs to know what

the free market is and what its alternatives are.Again, why is left for later. The term agorismis derived from the ancient Greek word agora,meaning an open market place.

The market is not a single place or center. Goodsand services are exchanged at the corner store, onthe stock exchange, at a swap meet, in your back-yard, or across the Internet. Playing a game with


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a friend is not a market transaction, but foregoing

the time that each of you could spend on workingor buying or selling is a market transaction.

All social interaction has a market component.Economics may be far more pervasive than wethought. It is difcult to imagine how we couldhave a free society should we wish it withouta free market. Perhaps we should be clear with

reference to what we mean by free.Free means the absence of coercion. Coercion

is threatening violence upon someone in orderto make him surrender something. In a strictlyvalue-free sense, then, coercive human action of-fers to create a greater disvalue to you if you donot yield up your lesser value. You gain nothing

but lose less.Repeated application of coercion destroys val-

ues. The coercer gains without producing anythingof value and the victim always loses. Voluntaryexchange, as we have seen, occurs when both feela gain in subjective value. Unease is relieved inboth directions. In coercive transactions, unease

is increased.Retrieving your goods from the coercer with

the threat of greater force and enough extra foryour time and trouble at least wipes out your loss,although it leaves the original coercer with a netloss. At this point, he may nally become awareof the value destruction of coercion. Or he may

simply decide he needs still greater force. (Thebiggest force of all in an area is usually the State,but well come to that later.)


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Strictly speaking, the free market is the absenceof all that coercion. If there were only a few pri-vate thieves and they were usually apprehendedand forced to make restitution, something veryclose to a free market would exist. People wouldhave locks, fences, alarms, and insurance policiesand protection-agent policies, but would act oth-erwise on the assumption that they were free to

give up their property to those of their choice andaccept from others who gave freely to them. Theycould not plan on people changing their minds,but they could make contracts (exchanging a goodhere and now for one to be given later) so that ifothers changed their minds, some compensationwould result.

Planning and Chaos

It quickly becomes clear that planning is far morepractical in a free market than in a coerced mar-

ket. If coercion becomes regular and predictable,innovative people nd ways around it and soon

enough join forces to evade the coercive regula-tions, frustrating and/or starving the coercer. (Seethe next chapter.)

So new forms of coercion must be brought inand economic planning is disrupted once again.

Some argue that a free market is Chaos; theysee no one giving orders and so think that there

is no order. In reality, a completely free marketis a highly decentralized order. Each cog in thegreat machine keeps itself well-oiled and seeks


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to mesh itself with the other cogs in ever-better

ts. An even better example is the human body.While the brain has some overall direction, it can-not instruct various cells to go about their waysdelivering blood and building tissue and contract-ing muscle and transmitting energy. A disease orparasite may direct some cells to a common task but this results in disruption of the natural or-

der. Even without a foreign invader, if the braincould force some cells to act other than naturally,the entire body would suffer by this imposed orderand the body could die.

The fallacy in planned economics is the errorof assuming that order is imposed. Scientists areaware that order is something you look for in na-

ture its already there.Economics tells us that attempts to impose order

by coercion are destructive and chaotic, yet economicplanning of the imposing kind is common to nearlyall schools of Economics. We begin to see where thegap between economics and Economics lies.

Competition and Monopoly

Its nice if more than one person offers to tradethe same thing with you. You usually can get a

better deal. When more than one seller offers identi-cal goods, and when more than one buyer offers toacquire the same goods,pure competitionexists.

If only one buyer or seller is available, the buyeror seller is said to have a monopoly.

Competition is always good in the sense that it


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maximizes value exchanges. Although it would

take more theory to prove this, most people havehad enough experience to accept the foregoing asa factual statement.

Surely not all monopoly is bad? If we banned allmonopoly, then Leonardo da Vinci would have hadto give up painting what only he can paint. And theBeatles would have had to stop composing what

only they can compose. In fact, since a little bit ofartistry distinguishes all goods, pure competitionis impossible. There are no identical products.

Yet, for your subjective purposes, you can seeno difference worth paying foramong all sorts ofgoods. And they do not have to be all that similar.With fteen dollars you might decide to buy a book

you wished to spend the evening with. Findingthe book sold, you consider a movie instead. Thelines are too long, so you buy a six pack insteadand go home.

Someone else would have different goods com-peting for that fteen dollars, even if he hadstarted out trying to buy that same book.

If I told you at this point that some Economistsdened a free market as a perfectly competitivemarket, you might wonder when they lost theirsenses. After all, if people want to produce differentthings (remember division of labor), and are moreproductive doing so, you will not get perfect com-petition in the free market. You will have lots of

competition by giving each human actor maximumfreedom to explore his values and nd alternatives.

Now if I tell you that these Economists say that


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if a market is not perfectly competitive, force

should be used to make it so. You probably arebeginning to wonder if I have not lost my senses.Whatever these Economists are after, it is nota free market. Nor will they generate any gainssince values are always net-destroyed by coercion.

Adam Smith dened monopoly as a grant ofexclusive trading by the king. It was a royal privi-

lege; that is, the State coerced some people not toproduce goods when the kings friend was alreadydoing so. Breaking up theseforced monopolieswasan issue for freedom-lovers and rightfully so.

The problems arose when people stopped think-ing clearly or had their thoughts muddled byEconomists. Monopoly became bad, not because it

was coercive, but because it was not competitive.Clear thinking and consistency lead us easily torealize that the opposite offorced monopolyandofforced competitionis natural monopolyandfreecompetition. The correct opposition is the coercedmarket vs.the free market.

Cartels

One problem with monopoly we seemed to haveoverlooked: do not the big get bigger and the

small get driven out even if the market is leftalone? The answer is obvious empirically: histori-cally, it has never happened. There is extensive

literature by the better sort of economists onmany historical examples where businesses wereaccused of forming trusts that is, attempting


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to monopolize one industry through cartels.

Most cases, when State trustbusters werebrought in to break up a large company, provedto have been instigated by smaller companiesagainst a more efcient competitor.

Cartels, as Dr. Murray Rothbard has beauti-fully shown, tend to break up from market forces.The most efcient cartel member can outsell his

fellow members and has a tremendous incentiveto cheat on the cartel agreement. He can stealthe customers from his fellow members and soondoes, under the table. Upon discovery, his fellowcartel members ght back by cutting prices andthe cartel disintegrates.

In a coerced market, however, the cartel will

run to someone to force compliance with the cartel.That someone is, in any realistic unfree market,the State. And once again we are back to theforcedor State monopoly.

Profit and Enterprise

Sometimes the terms free enterprise and capi-talism are used to mean free market.

Capitalismmeans the ideology (ism) of capital orcapitalists. Before Marx came along, the pure free-marketeer Thomas Hodgskin had already used theterm capitalism as a pejorative; capitalists were tryingto use coercion the State to restrict the market.

Capitalism, then, does not describe a free market buta form of statism (see Chapter Five), like communism.

Free enterprise can only exist in a free market


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and is an acceptable synonym, yet while the term

market covers all human transactions, enterpriseseems limited to certain types of business. Andwhat aboutprot? Is it the result of exploitation,enterprise, hard work, or something else?

Applying economic knowledge here resolves theproblem clearly but it will take a little effort tofollow through. According to (Austrian) econom-

ics, there are three productive functions in themarketplace: Labor, capital, and entrepreneur-ship. In the simplest, primitive economy, capitalconsists of tools, food you have stored to keep yougoing until your harvest comes in or you can sellthe shoes you made, and storefronts or wagons totake your goods to market. Labor is the work you

put into farming or shoemaking or whatever.Entrepreneurship is direction, the reins of the

operation, deciding where to invest the capitaland which and how many workers to hire. As themarket progresses to greater wealth and complex-ity, we can see that the important componentsof entrepreneurship are risk-takingand innova-

tion. Speculators, inventors, and artists (withoutpatrons) are the best-known, fairly pure entre-preneurs. They take risks, create (1) a productthat did not exist before, which turns out to havea demand; (2) a better product to replace one thatexisted before, winning away the demand; (3) acheaper method of producing or marketing the

same product, again winning away the demand.Thegain resulting from pure entrepreneurship

isprot. It is not the everyday return on investment


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that a businessman counts over his expenses and

takes home.Windfall protsoccur when there is a sudden

change in market conditions, such as weatherwiping out crops or producing bumper harvests,mineral and oil strikes suddenly coming onto themarket or when the market is not free sud-den government interference in the marketplace.

Those who make the most effort to anticipate theunexpected tend to make the most prots.

Taking risks also means one can introduce prod-ucts no one wants, invent devices that are laughedaway, and create artsy trash. Such creations incurnegative prot (loss) and, alas, this is at least ascommon, historically, as prot.

Nonetheless, without entrepreneurship en-terprise the economy would stagnate as peoplecontinue investing the same capital in the sameway, over and over, and workers continue at thesame jobs. When skilled laborers begin to dieout and capital runs out of components, such asminerals at mines or new forests for timber, the

economy would regress and collapse.Everyone is part laborer, pan capitalist, and

part entrepreneur, but by division of labor wetend to specialize. There is nothing to prevent usfrom all being wealthy (some day, at any rate)and using our money (as James Garner put it sowell in the lm The Wheeler Dealers) as a way of

keeping score in capital investment. And capital,in the form of ever-more-intelligent computers,can reduce labor to a vestigial activity (as neces-
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057681/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057681/


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sary as the human appendix). Entrepreneurship,

on the other hand, is increased, not decreased,by a progressive market. As our society becomesmore complex and more wealthy, more people willspecialize in entrepreneurial activity and morepeople must be free to do so.

Entrepreneurship cannot be forced. When bu-reaucrats plan, they spend their time nding

ways of covering their posteriors and pass thelosses on to the taxpayers. They fear replacementand since they reap little or no reward for success,they become timid about actually taking risks, andspend their time creating red tape entanglementsdesigned to stymie innovation.

Regulation

There is nothing positive to say about regula-tion. Regulation is coercion. It prevents subjec-

tive values from being satised, protecting onlythose who do not wish to be protected and penal-izing only the law-abiding. Regulation destroys

initiative and sties innovation. Regulation stag-nates markets. Regulation can and does kill peoplewhen the regulators deny victims the right to takea chance with so-called risky medication.

Regulation is motivated by fear, envy, and colos-sal ignorance. There is nothing that can protectinnocent people more than a thorough education

and a vigorous pursuit of fraud; yet regulation ofadvertising and experimentation destroys infor-mation transfer and regulation of quality merely


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certies incompetent professionals and protects

them from fraud charges.If all the regulation passed in any country you

wish to name were completely obeyed, let aloneenforced, we would all be dead.

Consider a particularly pathological case in theUnited States of America. If you charge a price foryour product higher than your competitors, this is

taken as evidence under the Sherman Anti-TrustAct that you have a monopoly and charges may bebrought against you. The same problem arises ifyou charge the same; that is considered evidenceof a cartel and you and your competitors can all bened. Finally, if you charge less than your com-petitors, you are violating the Fair Trade laws

in most states and can be arrested and ned. It isimpossible to obey all the regulations.

Taxation

T

here is a serious moral question about taxa-

tion that we will leave for later. Let it sufcenow to recognize that taxation takes somethingfrom someone against his or her will and is a vio-lation of his or her subjective values. Any specicform of taxation directs resources counter-entre-preneurially. In short, taxation has no place in afree market.


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Interest

There are three very closely related conceptsin economics, and they have to do with capital,

land, and money. It is often said that capital earnsa rate of return on investment (remember, only

entrepreneurs make prots), land earns rent, andmoney earns interest. With an efcient medium ofexchange, an entrepreneur will quickly shift fromcapital goods of one type to another if the rate ofreturn is higher in one sector of the market thanthe other. Land is a xed form of capital, and ifwe are in a free market we should expect rent to

come to equal the rate of return as in other invest-ments assuming no risks (where prot wouldbe added or subtracted). And so it is with interest.

Originary interestis what money earns if you lendit out to an entrepreneur risk-free. Should you ac-cept risk yourself, you may add on a risk component,a form of prot. At the same level of risk, in a highly

developed market, interest rates should stabilizeand slowly decrease as wealth increases.

Only if something becomes powerful enough coercive enough to monopolize (by force) allthe media of exchange (or money supply) and thenincrease it so that the value of each unit declines,will another component appear to increase the

interest rate (regardless of risk). Conceivably itcould decrease the money supply so that the valuewould be expected to increase and interest to be


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discounted. In an extreme case, this inationary

component could drive interest rates to zero ornegative that is, someone pays you to take hismoney and give it back to him later.Deation israre, as there is very little incentive for controllersof the money supply to deate.

InflationU

nderstanding how ination works and whatto do about it made the fortunes of the gold

bugs and investment analysts mentioned earlier.While there is considerable fog and confusionthrown around this subject, ination is simpleenough to understand if you follow our step-by-

step logic and (always!) watch for inconsistencies.From Chapter One we know what money is.

Free-market money could be affected by, say, a goldstrike or, if for some reason the gold was all kept ina Fort Knox, by James Bonds Goldnger nukingit. Even then, there would be a brief dip or jumpin the price of gold (the price of money is simply

the inverse of the prices of everything bought withit), and stability would resume at the new level. Ina worldwide market, the effect even of nukingFort Knox would be barely noticeable.

Ination is the increase of the money supply. In-ation results only when the most powerful forcein society the State commands a monopolistic

at money system, creates legal tenderlaws (legaltender compels the monopoly, contracts are not up-held in other tender or money), and with army


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and police to back it up debases a form of money

that was acceptable in the marketplace.States that have imposed fiat money from

scratch (such as in newly emerging Third Worldcountries) nd their money rapidly rejected in fa-vor of foreign currency and gold. The usual routeto ination takes four steps: 1)Replacement ofmoney by certicates for the money. A weight of

gold or silver is replaced by a certicate claimingan ounce of gold or pound of silver in some pre-cious metal warehouse or bank. 2)Legal deni-tion of possession of the certicate as equivalentto possessing the wealth. (The government getsinto the act.) 3)Restriction of all exchanges (saveprimitive bartering) to the legal certicates; this is

the creation of legal tender. 4)Issuing certicateswithout money to back them up. At this point wehave at money and ination.

Ination leads to crack-up booms (German in1923) and depressions (U.S. in 1929). This analy-sis is a bit more complicated and is best left to themore cataclysmic scenarios well present near the

end of the book.Oh, and as you probably guessed, one result

of ination is a general rise in price level. Noticethat some prices rise faster than others, and someeven seem to drop. Only the distortion is commonto all price changes.


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A Little Knowledge

If you have mastered the rst two chapters, con-gratulations! You will quickly discover two

things by simply reading your daily newspaperor news blog or shooting the breeze with your

acquaintances.First, you will discover the appalling level of

ignorance with which most of society is aficted.Be careful some people get very irritable whenchallenged by someone who knows what he istalking about. A knowledgeable person might betempted to use his knowledge to bilk the ignorant.

Many people with only a little knowledge do justthat. However, there are moral ways to prot byyour understanding and, by all means, go to it.

Second, you will discover that the appallingweb of Statism is controlling or attempting tocontrol nearly every aspect of human action.You will probably feel smothered and that is not

surprising. You may also feel like giving up andgiving in but survival alone dictates otherwise.

Survival let alone prosperity demandsthat you tear through the web of legislation andfollow natures laws instead. You must abandonEconomics to the regulators and the politicalbusinessmen who play ball with them. You are

left with the alternative: stie yourself and starveor embrace Counter-Economics.


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Chapter Three

COUNTER-ECONOMICS

We see that nearly every action is regu-lated, taxed, prohibited, or subsidized.Much of this Statism for it is only

the State that wields such power is so contradic-tory that little ever gets done. If you cannot obey the(States) laws and charge less than, more than, or

the same as your competitor, what do you do? You goout of business or you break the law. Suppose payingyour taxes would drive you out of business? You goout of business or you break the law.

Government laws have no intrinsic relationship withright and wrong or good and evil. Historically, mostpeople knew that the royal edicts were for the kings

good, not theirs. People went along with the king be-cause the alternative looked worse. This line of thinkingleads to Chapter Five, so well just note here that eventoday, society recognizes the conscientious objector:the religious dissenter to laws that his deity forbidshim to obey, the man or woman who follows the Lawof God or Nature against the monopoly of force in

society. Since they would rather die than submit, asociety which restrains its government from heavyrepression will exempt many objectors.


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But everyone is a resister to the extent that he

survives in a society where laws control everythingand give contradictory orders. All (non-coercive)human action committed in deance of the State

constitutes the Counter-Economy. (For ease of lateranalysis, we exclude murder and theft, whichare done with the disapproval of the State. Sincetaxation and war encompass nearly all cases of

theft and murder, the few independent acts reallyshould be classied as other forms of statism.)Since anything the State does not licence or ap-prove of is forbidden or prohibited, there are nothird possibilities.

A Counter-Economist is (1) anyone practicinga counter-economic act; (2) one who studies such

acts. Counter-Economics is the (1) practice (2)study of counter-economic acts.

The Size of the Counter-Economy

The Counter-Economy is vast. Our brief studyof economics tells us that this should be no

surprise. The more controls and taxation a Stateimposes on its people, the more they will evadeand defy them. Since the United States is one ofthe less (ofcially) controlled countries, and theCounter-Economy here is fairly large, the globalCounter-Economy should be expected to be evenlarger and it is.

U.S. government estimates of the size of justthe tax-dodging part of the Counter-Economyis twenty to forty million of the population. The


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Western European Counter-Economy is larger; in

Italy, much of the civil service sits in governmentofces during the early part of the day and thenmoonlights at private jobs and business in theafternoon and evening.

Communism collapsed in no small part due tothe Counter-Economy. Nearly everything wasavailable in the Counter-Economy with only

shoddy goods and shortages in the ofcial social-ist economy. The Soviets called Counter-Economicgoods left-hand or nalevo and entire manufac-turing assembly lines co-existed nalevo with thedesultory State industry ones, on the same factoryoor. Counter-Economic capitalists sold sharesin their companies and vacationed in Black Sea

resorts. Managers of collective farms who neededa tractor replaced in a hurry look to the Counter-Economy rather than see their kolkhoz collapseawaiting a State tractor delivery. Currently, theRussian government seeks to reestablish Statecontrol of the economy by granting monopoliesto cronies and imprisoning recalcitrant corporate

executives. As with Communism, this irtation withFascism is just as doomed to failure.

Nothing works in right-hand communism;everything works in the left-hand free market.

From black market apartments in the Neth-erlands to black housing in Argentina, theCounter-Economy is well known to the people

of the world as the place to get things otherwiseunobtainable or keep things one has earned.Ination breeds ight from at money; exchange


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controls have created dual exchange rates in

nearly every country on the globe. Whatever thenumber of local currency units a tourist can getfor his dollars at the ofcial exchange rate, he orshe can get more on the black market.

Smuggling is so commonplace that nearly alltourists slip purchases past customs agents with-out thinking. Perhaps 20%-30% of Americans fail

to report taxable income (actually nearly 100% failto report at least some); but, in Latin Americancountries, close to 80% goes uncollected and theState supports itself by ever-greater ination ofthe at money supply.

The border between Hong Kong and CommunistChina and even the ocean straits between Taiwan

and the mainland bustle with illegal trade. West-ern DVDs and jeans were once illegally availablein most provinces of China now theyre manu-facturing them there!

Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, remainsthe black market center of Vietnam. Even moretelling, it produces most of the goods and services

of all Vietnam. Myanmars (Burmas) rigidly con-trolled ofcial economy, according to the Manches-ter Guardian, is nothing but paper and the entiremarket has gone black.

Under the noses of American forces, Afghani tribesgrow, process, and ship heroin by the metric tonne.

Tax evasion, ination avoidance, smuggling,

free production, and illegal distribution still com-pose only half the Counter-Economy. Labor owsas freely as capital, as hordes of illegal aliens


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pour across borders from more-statist to less-

statist economic regions.Consciousness-altering substances and even

unproven medicines such as dichloroacetate andLaetrile make up a well-known but small frac-tion of the Counter-Economy. Drugs are grownon huge plantations, rened in scores of factoriesand laboratories, distributed by eets of boats,

planes, trucks and cars, and sold to customers byregiments of wholesalers and armies of street dealers.

The States imposition of some peoples moralcodes on others leads to Bible smuggling in atheistStates and pornography publishing in conserva-tive religious States. The worlds oldest profes-sion, as sexual prostitution has been titled, is

also if that title is true the worlds oldestcounter-economic industry.

Feminists seeking control of their own bodieslook to the Counter-Economy to obtain contracep-tives and nd midwives to deliver babies their wayin the Counter-Economy.

Nobody works at anything anywhere which is

not connected with Counter-Economics. Thoselooking for a more exhaustive listing of counter-economic activities, with all the sources and refer-ences footnoted, are invited to read the authorsupcoming book Counter-Economics.

Information

Two Counter-Economic industries are singledout for their importance to agorism. Justice


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is a commodity; its manner of distribution denes

a social system and will be covered in detail inChapter Seven.

The other business is Information. The Internetexplosion has led the American State for now,at any rate to throw up its tentacles at regula-tion of the Information industry. Every legisla-tive session, however, brings new attempts to tax

and control the World Wide Web. But considerthis well: should the Counter-Economy lick theinformation problem, it would virtually eliminatethe risk it incurs under the States threat. Thatis, if you can advertise your products, reach yourconsumers and accept payment (a form of infor-mation), all outside the detection capabilities of

the State, what enforcement of control would be left?At the leading edge of Web development today

is encryption. Advanced researchers have devel-oped methods of locking away data in memorybanks that defy any breaking in. That is, theState cannot reach the invoices, inventory lists,accounts and so on of the Counter-Economist. An

area of human society immune to the power of theState deserves the name if anything does ofAnarchy. The State, though, continues to attemptto penetrate privacy with quantum computingmethods of cracking even the most complex cryp-tographic schemes. Will the Counter-Economyrespond with quantum cryptography? Stay tuned

the race is hardly at an end.This leads us to two crucial questions: what

happens if the State is abolished and we have a


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free market and why has the Counter-Economy

not overwhelmed the existing economy already?These questions bring us back to the land of theorywhere libertarianism answers the rst questionand agorism the second.

Before we deal with them, let us consider someapplications of counter-economic business prac-tices and social interactions, which will both il-

lustrate our descriptions and possibly be of someprot to you and yours.


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Chapter Four

APPLIED

COUNTER-ECONOMICS

Counter-Economics is appl icat ion.People have discovered and acted ina Counter-Economic way without un-

derstanding what they are doing, why they aredoing it, and even denying that they are doingit at all.

Understanding what you are doing usuallyhelps, and applying Counter-Economics system-atically and consistently maximizes both yourprot and freedom. As it turns out, the basicformula is no more difcult than simple account-ing arithmetic used in all business.

The basic law of Counter-Economics is to traderisk for prot. Having done so, one naturally(acting to remove felt unease) attempts to reducethe risks. If you reduce your risks while otherscontinue to face the higher risks, you naturallyout-compete and survive longer. And you prot.


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Whats The Risk?

It is possible to make a reasonable estimate ofthe risks you are taking in Counter-Economic

activity, which is better precision than many busi-ness ventures offer. The government itself gathersstatistics concerning apprehension of criminals.

And publishes them. The police agencies brag abouthow few cases are solved and how fast the crimerate is growing to justify ever-bigger budgets.

Nonetheless, most crimes go completely unre-ported and undetected, so the States stats are anupper limit of apprehension. That is, their guresare useful as maximum risk. The highest appre-

hension rate for the most foul crimes seldom hit20%, an indication of government effectiveness inmaintaining public order.

Is It Worth It?

Suppose you wish to do something Counter-Eco-nomic. To be specic, you can buy something

for $10,000 and sell it for $20,000. Your regularoverhead is $5000. Your net return on investmentis $5000 (on an investment of $15,000 thats 33%,extremely high) but, since there is a risk, how canyou tell if the return is worth it?

Lets say the government claims it catches 20%of those doing what you want to do. If you are

caught, the penalty would be a (maximum) neof $50,000 or six months in jail. Your downsiderisk, then, is 20% of $50,000 or $10,000. In this


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example, it would not be worth it: to gain $5000

but risk losing $10,000.If the apprehension rate were 10% and the ne

$25,000, then your risk would be $2500 for a gainof $5000. As is obvious, you could get caught onetime in ten, pay off your nes, and still come outway ahead. Of course, all these calculations makecertain assumptions about your subjective values.

You may fear risk to a pathological state and anyrisk is too much. Or you may love frustrating theState and take high risks for lower gain just forthe fun of it.

Actually, a more realistic risk estimate would in-clude the price of a lawyer to beat your charges andthe probability of being convicted after apprehension.

Assume that the retainer to your lawyer raisesyour overhead $1000 per transaction. Now yourpayoff is $4000, but the conviction rate (with pleabargaining and court delays) is only 20%. (Again,that is high in many jurisdictions; many cases aredropped long before they come to trial.)

Now your risk, using our rst gures, is 20% of

20% of $50,000, or $2000. With a payoff of $4000,a loss of $2000 would deter few entrepreneurs.If you would like a simple formula for your ownbusiness, try this:

Counter-Economic Payoff = prot minus loss =(Promised price) minus (cost minus overhead) minus

((Penalty or Fine) x (probability of arrest) x (probability of conviction))

If positive, go. If negative, dont go.


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Lowering Risks

Taking reasonable steps to conceal your activi-ties from accidental discovery, learning to talk

only to trusted friends, spotting poor risks or gov-ernment agents all reduce your risk and increaseyour payoff. As you develop techniques to loweryour risk, you will increase your counter-economic

activities. More of them become protable.These side effects include the creation of an agoristsociety. More on that in Chapter Seven.

Counter-Economizing

W

hile its true that you cannot obey all the

inconsistent laws of the State and so becompletely white market, you can live completelyCounter-Economically and be completely blackmarket.

In the middle 1970s, the federal State passeda regulation imposing a maximum speed limiton U.S. highways of 55 mph. With the threat of

cutting federal funds to states and counties, theentire driving population decelerated to a creepingcrawl. Or did it?

Consider the following calculation: at 55 mph atrucker can drive 55 miles in an hour, 550 miles inten hours and 2200 miles in 40 hours. At an aver-age of 70 mph, he makes 700 miles in ten hoursand 2800 miles in 40 hours.

To make it even clearer, assume that the truckernets $1000, after costs, for each 600 mile run.


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He makes four runs legally for $4000 in an easy

week, or $5000 by extending his hours or work-ing weekends. At 70 mph he makes $5000 for the(roughly) 40 hour week.

With that type of incentive, the race went tothe swift and the double nickel speed limit wasscofawed. But being caught and ned could wipeout that advantage. Suppose fuel were consumed

at a rate that cost an extra $200 at the higherspeed, and you received an average ne of $200.Four busts a week and its no longer worth it.

Along came Citizens Band Radio. Put $200 or$400 once into a CB radio investment, reduce yourbusts to once a week, and youre back in business.And that, of course, is what happened. Truckers

spotted for each other, formed convoys, andthwarted the States Smokey Bear highwaymen.

Consider the side effects:

Truckers found solidarity economically, cul-

turally, and anti-politically

A CB culture exploded into the popular culture

with C. W. McCalls classic song Convoy Non-truckers who were willing to buy a CB

and learn the culture (especially the language)

were accepted freely into the ordered highway an-

archy. More evasion of regulations followed and the

Counter-Economy grew

Truckers, many of conservative upbringing,

became considerably more tolerant and willing to

help other lawbreakers when their common enemy,Smokey, threatened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_%28song%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_%28song%29


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The CB explosion is not meant here to be a

model, in the sense of waiting around for the Stateto trigger off mass rebellion by an egregiouslystupid law. This happened to be a particularlyspectacular case, but no more than the suddenjump in counter-economics when Prohibition waspassed in the 1920s or when the draft led to two-year slavery, and possible death, in 1964. And the

State does not learn from its mistakes, as recentefforts to reimpose the 55 mph limit as well asreactivate the draft arise again.

Counter-Economizing Yourself

W

hatever service you provide the market, you

know best how to counter-economize. Youknow best which regulations to avoid rst formaximum payoff-to-risk ratio. You know whichsuppliers can be trusted and which cannot. Youknow which customers to trust and which not totrust. Division of labor, subjective value, and hu-man individuality all contribute to making your

case (and everyone elses) unique.If you seek or want advice on how best to coun-

ter-economize, you need personal counseling (simi-lar to investment counseling). But, consideringthe hundreds of millions of people many witheducational and cultural handicaps who coun-ter-economize quite successfully, the challenge is

not that great. You need mostly the will to do it.(And that Psychological Counter-Economics willbe important as part of Chapter Eight.)


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Its undoubtedly easier to extend your counter-

economizing when everyone else is doing it. Mostpeople are, but in small and different ways.

Still, if you could win more suppliers and cus-tomers over to your trust and get them to counter-economize, they would not only resist turning youin but they would develop a tendency not to leaksecrets and would, therefore, decrease your risk

and increase your payoff both ways.This fact is the driving force toward expansion of

the Counter-Economy. This force is what Agorismunleashes against the State.


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Chapter Five

LIBERTARIANISM

The basic premise of agorist thinking is thatCounter-Economics has failed to free soci-ety because Counter-Economics lacks a

moral structure that only a full-blown philosophi-cal system can provide. In this chapter, we dealwith the other half of this problem: an ideology

unconnected to reality. Where Counter-Economicsis application without theory, Libertarianism istheory without application.

Many Gods, One Morality

L

ibertarianism differs from all other philoso-

phies by itspluralism. It does not to ask howyou came to the fundamental moral premise: re-ligious revelation, atheistic observation, naturallaw theory, or many others. Christians, Taoists,Objectivists, and Pagans travel different routesto arrive at one moral code in common: initiationof coercion, or the threat of violence, is immoral.

This is the libertarian principle.Two things follow from the phrasing: (1) there

are no exceptions, hence libertarianism affects all


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human action by this formulation; (2) it is phrased

negatively, so that anything else is permissiblehuman behavior, though each adherent may ndother acts immoral or objectionable.

Christianity yields a yes-no answer to everyaspect of human activity; so, too, Marxism, Islam,Objectivism, and many, many other understand-ings of the worlds nature. In these systems, any-

thing not prohibited is mandatory. You must oryou must not. Libertarianism answers only thatyou may or you may not, leaving choice to you.

Any religion or ideology that swears not to co-erce others to act in accordance with its preceptsis compatible with libertarianism. All religionsand ideologies that use force for anything save

self-defence (in the narrow, immediate sense,excluding preventive aggression and other suchrationalizations) are enemies of libertarianism.

Libertarian Society

Libertarianisms very pluralism prevents onefrom ascribing any unanimous characteristic

to Libertarians. They all want Liberty, but for dif-ferent reasons, and see different ways of achievingit. Some would take control of the State and forcepeople to be free, others would not even resort toviolence to defend themselves. Giving all those

groups their due for enriching Libertarian thoughtand life with greater variety than any other ide-ology, the rigorous application of consistency (to


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which agorists and this book adhere) does settle

some issues.Afree societyis one in which Man is constrained

only by unthinking Nature. His fellow men leavehim alone. One can personally live up to this andone can admit only those who uphold it, expellingall those who dont. But one cannot prevent anyonefrom instituting aggression, one can only deal with

it after the fact.Statists advocate creating a bigger criminal, a

great monster institution which will terrify nearlyeveryone, innocent or guilty, into submission. Thisorganization will extract some form of acceptancefrom its citizens and yet plunder them at will(taxation). It will control their behavior and even

their thinking, though some statists seek to placesome restraints upon this super-criminal organi-zation. Some of those who advocate the strongestrestraints (as they perceive them) call themselveslimited government libertarians. Since they seeka small state or mini-archy, they are minarchists.

Consistent libertarians see no place for crimi-

nals, even to ght other criminals. They believefree-market (all-voluntary) methods will take careof the few criminals; nding them (investigation),arresting them (delegated protection), trying them(arbitration), and restoring lost value to the victimfrom the aggressors (restitution). The means ofaccomplishing this vary from communal power to

highly technological, competitive business agen-cies and others in between, such as neighborhoodblock associations. Such no-government libertar-


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ians are called anarchists. The peaceful libertar-

ians who refuse even to defend themselves haveto be classied with anarchists.

It is bitterly ironic that heavy State propagandahas convinced many people that anarchists throwbombs, since most anti-war movements, draft re-sistance, disarmament, and tax resistance groupswere organized by anarchists of one sort or an-

other. Perhaps 0.01 % of those calling themselvesanarchists throughout history have used a bomb;100% of all States bomb, shell, and machine-gunregularly as a matter of course.

A Libertarian societyis one which approximatesa free society save for a small percentage of crimi-nal aggression, which is handled by voluntary

mechanisms. A society in which aggression getsout of hand is one with a de facto, if not de jure,State or government: a statist society.

Libertarianism and the Free Market

Afew libertarians advocate communal orneighborhood social organization with col-

lectively held property voluntarily surrendered.Most libertarians have adopted the free marketand the economic understanding of it developedin Chapter One. So whenever a conict between theEconomics of government intervention or conscation

(statism, for short) and free enterprise emerges inpublic debate, Libertarians rush to the forefrontof defence of the individual or non-state group.


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Libertarianism often confuses statists of the Left

wing and the Right by opposing both. Libertarianssee war as total socialism and march with manyLeftists against it. Yet opposition to welfare stat-ism allies Libertarianism with some Rightists.

But Statists of the Left and Right are easily distin-guishable from libertarians in any coalition: threatenthe States existence and observe their reaction.

Conservatives will give up free enterprise ratherthan see government abolished; liberals will goto war rather than see government abolished.Libertarians will abolish the State and end bothsocialism and war.

Libertarianism and theCounter-Economy

Libertarian dissidents, from Polish professorsto American students, make up an intellec-

tual eld of Counter-Economics. A Yugoslaviantheorist, raised in the Marxist tradition, called for

removing politics from Socialism and embracinga market economy.

It would appear that there is a natural afn-ity between the philosophers of freedom and thepractitioners of Counter-Economics. Indeed, fewlibertarians would deny the moral correctness ofthe latter. An early slogan some radical libertar-

ians put on a button was Defend The Black Mar-ket. Libertarianism in the United States tracesits history from the Abolitionist movement to free


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the slaves, an act of human counter-economics.

And yet, while many abolitionists created andmaintained an Underground Railway to assistslaves who freed themselves counter-economically,others called for upholding the law, workingwithin the system and engaging in politics to takeover the government and pass laws to free slaves.The same division between activists and reform-

ers aficts modern libertarians and many otherideological movements, to be sure.

George Orwell, who came to a type of libertarian-ism from activism in the Socialist movement of the1930s, castigated some of his fellow socialists forrefusing to dirty their hands in actually ghtingfor their beliefs on the battleelds of Spain. This

perceptive author of 1984 andAnimal Farmnotedthese hypocritical dilettantes proclivity for hang-ing around English drawing rooms and waxingeloquent for the socialist cause while contributingprecious little else. He called them Parlor Pinks.

Libertarianism is aficted with more than itsshare of Library Libs today. Some, though, are

horribly paralyzed by the question, How do weachieve a free society?

This combination of strategic paralysis, morallassitude, honest confusion due to the rich varietyof libertarian pluralism, and not a little sellingout, has weakened libertarianism to the pointwhere what is presently called the Libertarian

Movement may no longer be trusted to defend theCounter-Economy and achieve a libertarian society.

The next chapter shows why.


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Chapter Six

APPLIEDLIBERTARIANISM

A Brief History of Liberty

The history of the Libertarian movement canbe divided into four historical periods. Therst covered most of our history, when

many men and women derived the ideas of free-dom and defended freedom as they understoodit with little comprehension of the mechanics ofhuman action. Some of these, such as the Quak-ers of Pennsylvania, settled colonies away frompredatory statism and developed peace and tradewith the natives.

The American Revolution erupted the year thatAdam Smith published the rst basic work oneconomics. Still, the confused American Revolu-tionaries allowed the Federalist statists to restorea strong central government by a bit of trickerycalled the Constitution, a piece of paper whichsupposedly guaranteed to restrain the new State.Most of the Revolutionaries nearly all thesigners of the Declaration of Independence, forinstance opposed the Constitution. Many Amer-


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icans were taken in by the statist selling job andlaid down their arms that were defending them,practically in exchange for the paper guarantee.

As soon as the new government was elected,it sent the military to Pennsylvania to crush thetax-rebels who opposed the new tax on whiskeydistillation.

In England, soon after, a man named William

Godwin took the political ideas of the AmericanRevolutionaries to their logical conclusion andbecame the rst anarchist. In the 1830s Europeanintellectual scene, a man named Max Stirnercom-bined anarchy with defence of the free market (asfar as Adam Smith understood it then) and createda philosophy of egoism or total individualism. For

a time, he contested with Marx and Engels forthe loyalty of the Young Hegelians in the Germanclubs. They wrote a two-volume defense of theirtheory against Stirner (The German Ideology).

In the United States, Josiah Warren continuedthe anarchist tradition in Massachusetts. Oneof his abolitionist followers, Lysander Spooner,

nally developed the killing argument against theU.S. State in his remarkable natural law treatise,No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority.Alas, it was nearly a century late because theState was entrenched well enough to ght a civilwar to destroy the remaining internal restraintson its power naturally, under the pretext of

expanding freedom by abolishing slavery.Spooner saw through that smokescreen and

supported both abolition and secession of the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirnerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_German_Ideologyhttp://www.amazon.com/No-Treason-Constitution-Authority/dp/1419137190http://www.amazon.com/No-Treason-Constitution-Authority/dp/1419137190http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_German_Ideologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner


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Southern States. His follower, Benjamin Tucker,

discovered Stirners European individualismand combined the two traditions. The heyday ofIndividualist Anarchism, during the publicationof Tuckers Liberty magazine, from 1881 to 1908,could be called the second stage of Libertarianism.George Bernard Shaw, for example, broke into theAmerican literary scene through Liberty. (The full

title of Tuckers journal wasLiberty: the Mother,Not the Daughter, of Order.)

Tucker still had problems with economics, notunderstanding subjective value or the validity ofrent, interest, and prot. While willing to acceptanything arrived at freely, he and his associatesspent their energies on side issues and invalid

controversies. When World War I broke out, theylost the center stage of history to the socialists forhalf a century.

At the same time that Tucker himself was giv-ing up, brilliant Austrian economist Ludwig VonMises wrote his doctoral thesis (1910),The Theoryof Money and Credit, which explained interest,

ination, and business cycles. His analysis led toan easy explanation (and prediction) of the GreatDepression, but it went unheeded. In 1949, Misespublished his magnum opus, Human Action. Alongthe way, he sent the Communist Economists intoa panic by proving that economic calculation wasimpossible once socialist statists destroyed the

free-market pricing system.During the 1920s and 1930s, proto-libertarians

such as H.L. Mencken and Albert J. Nock kept
http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Comprehensive_Index_to_Libertyhttp://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Comprehensive_Index_to_Libertyhttp://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Comprehensive_Index_to_Libertyhttp://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=180http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=180http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=180http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=180http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=180http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Comprehensive_Index_to_Libertyhttp://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Comprehensive_Index_to_Liberty


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the philosophy alive but in despair. One of Nocks

students, Frank Chodorov, reached one of Misessstudents, Murray Rothbard. In 1950, Rothbardconnected with the American anarchist traditionand the modern libertarian stage began.

Another of Nocks students, Suzanne LaFollette,inspired many modern libertarian feminists. Morewomen Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Patterson

kept libertarianism alive in the 1940s.For twenty years, Rothbard tirelessly sold his

consistent libertarian view in intellectual circlesand was purged from the Right, from Objectivists,from the Left, and various other groups, alwaystaking a few more with him, never despairing. In1969, during the heat of the student revolt against

the Vietnam War and the draft, both the leftistStudents for a Democratic Society and the rightistYoung Americans for Freedom split internally. Theanarchists from SDS joined the free marketeersfrom YAF at a convention called by Dr. Rothbard,and thousands of young activists were unleashedonto the campuses to ght for pure freedom.

Within a few years, there were a million Liber-tarians in North America and small groups fromEngland to Spain to Australia. Libertarians gradu-ated and started businesses or entered the higherlevels of academy, bringing reinforcements to Dr.Rothbard and his previously small corps. Liber-tarian reporters, authors, and even newscasters

spread through the media.Robert LeFevre, another libertarian educator

contemporary with Rothbard, graduated hundreds


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of businessmen from his seminars and thousands

from Rampart College. Leonard Read and his crewreached many from all walks of life at the Foun-dation for Economic Education. New foundationsand institutes sprang up.

Early in 1971, a group of Californians started aLibertarian Party as a front for distribution ofliterature and appeal for equal time on local me-

dia. In December of 1971, David F. Nolan conveneda founding convention of a Libertarian Party indeadly earnest. Rothbard scoffed at the idea of aparty as wildly premature.

In 1972, an LP presidential candidate got fewvotes, but, thanks to a renegade Republican elec-tor from Virginia, John Hospers, Professor of Phi-

losophy at the University of Southern California,received one electoral vote. His running mate,Toni Nathan of Oregon, became the rst woman toreceive one. The elector, Roger MacBride, becamethe LP nominee for president in 1976.

The LP emerged from two sources: impatienceand inconsistency. In 1972, the student movement

collapsed but the graduates needed years to affectsociety by working their way through the systemand building alternatives outside it. This desireto achieve results now get rich quick wasexpressed in the return of many who had rejectedthe Statist system to re-enter it, though most ofthose entering the LP were not the politically

cynical old-timers.The more raw recruits to libertarianism had lit-

tle direct experience with politics and so accepted


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arguments that the party would spread the word

to people used to receiving it via the biennial elec-toral process. While half the LP recruiters sworethat the LP was an educational tool and wouldnever win an election and take power, the otherhalf promised the replacement of the Republicansby the new party and the transformation of societyfrom the top down.

During 1973, the party threat became seriousand the libertarian movement began to split. Theanti-party libertarians called themselves vari-ous names such as New Libertarians, Left (moreconsistently radical) Libertarians, Radical Liber-tarians, and exotic names such as Voluntaryists.The common goal of these activists was to deect

the Party anti-principle in the minds and heartsof most libertarians and pursue the original goalsof Liberty in libertarian that is, anti-political ways. ThePartyarchs (as those who professedbeing ruled by a party, yet called themselves an-archists, were then called) and their minarchistallies were small in number but did have an

advantage in getting newspaper and televisioncoverage. (Radical libertarian campaigns such asthe 1976 Vote For Nobody CounterCampaignreceived publicity on several hundred radio sta-tions and 50% of registered American voters failedto cast ballots.)

More and more pure libertarians gave up on

the label as the word was increasingly identiedwith a group out to take political power asopposed to abolishing it. The New Libertarians
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found that many who would agree to live freely

and trade without aggression were repelled by theLibertarian name.

Finally, in 1983, the Movement of the Libertar-ian Left, the New Libertarian Alliance, and othersmoved to drop the Libertarian label entirely. Somechose the name Voluntaryism. Those wishing topromote the completely consistent ideology de-

scribed in this book chose the name agorist.During the 1973 struggle, the challenges for an

alternative strategy to politics were answered bythe NLA founder who discovered and coined theterm Counter-Economics (see Chapter Three).In 1980, the NLA published New LibertarianManifesto, which explained agorism and beyond

to libertarian activists.

The Libertarian Failure

Libertarians were and still are a pluralisticgroup. Different interpretations of Liberty

and how to achieve it were cheerfully tolerated for

the most part. The appearance of a Party linewas anathema to this spirit of living variety. Theburning issue shifted from which new libertar-ian theory works and which does not? to whichLibertarian candidate can get elected?

To many, Libertarianism was a fine theorywhich had no obvious practice. There are many

paths to freedom (true) and each individual shouldchoose the one he or she thought most workable.One that was chosen swallowed up the others.


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(How it did was simple: it tied into the States

grant of monopoly to ideologies that form a cen-tralized political party and then spokespersonsof that ideology are automatically representedas servitors or functionaries of that party, evenwhen they vigorously deny any connection, by thestatist media.)

And, then again, maybe not. Libertarian may

have come to mean LP member but agorists,Voluntaryists, Left Libertarians, and such stilloutnumber the few thousand LP members andeven the never-since-matched million votes theircandidate, Edward Clark, received in the 1980U.S. presidential race.

Whether or not libertarianism failed and died

perverted so near to 1984 (Orwells deadline fortyrannys triumph in the form of an all-powerful

party) or was simply a stage in the evolution ofagorism, building a theory to explain and morallydefend Counter-Economics, is a moot point. Bothpositions are, in a sense, true. Agorism is here andviable for those who wish to live as freely as pos-

sible now and increase their freedom in the future.What now calls itself Libertarian cannot honestlyoffer that anymore. Those who understand this willreject the Libertarian Party and other politicalsolutions to the statist problem; those who acceptthe LP will waste their time, energy and wealth inbuilding a new means of keeping people in bondage

under the thumb of the State.


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The Libertarian Insight and Fallacy

Libertarian theory provided the crucial insightas to why Counter-Economics was morally

correct as well as (obviously) practical and veryprotable. The crucial issue was that of the State,its nature, and its evolution.

The easiest paradigm (short model) for the originof the State was offered by Franz Oppen-heimer,a German sociologist, and adapted into Americanlibertarianism in Albert J. Nocks 1935 book, OurEnemy, The State. All historical examples t thissimple paradigm:

When most of humanity settled into peace-

ful farming communities, with perhaps largermarketplaces (remember the original agora ofGreece) in towns, some people discovered a meansof surviving parasitically from the productivity ofothers. They formed robber bands and attackedtowns and settlements, plundering, raping, andmurdering. Probably the original barbarian hordeswere hunters who took to hunting man when theirgame died out rather than taking to farming, trad-ing, or productive manufacture.

These roving groups were a small minority (ortheir victims would have died out and they aswell) but large as compared to a single town orvillage. Somewhere along the way, one of themdiscovered that they could allow the peasants tolive with enough to survive on and come back atthe next harvest for another raid.
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Enemy-State-Albert-Nock/dp/B001E28SUMhttp://www.amazon.com/Our-Enemy-State-Albert-Nock/dp/B001E28SUMhttp://www.amazon.com/Our-Enemy-State-Albert-Nock/dp/B001E28SUMhttp://www.amazon.com/Our-Enemy-State-Albert-Nock/dp/B001E28SUM


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Then these raiders had another idea: they would

stay in the same towns, steal lightly but regularly,murder enough to keep the peasants and mer-chants in line, and live well. Other areas, seeingthese petty kingdoms arise, decided to submitthemselves to their own home-grown warlordsso that they would not fall prey to foreign war-riors. (The Book of Samuelin the Old Testament

describes the anarchist prophet Samuel trying toconvince the Israelites that they didnt really wanta king but nally giving in to them.)

Parasites must remain a minority or kill theirhosts. So they discovered religion (and later ideol-ogy) as a means to intimidate peasants and winthe all-important sanction of the victim (an apt

phrase

Documents

An Agorist Primer by SEK3