Over the last week I’ve been reading about agorism. My preliminary conclusion is that it represents the most consistent application of libertarianism.
However, one of the novel positions of agorism is that they are more sympathetic to socialists:
The ancap says to a socialist, “You are my enemy. You stand for theft and oppression. You stand for illegitemate authority, and support the good of one class at the expense of another. You are the antithesis of everything I believe.” (On a related note, most socialists react the same way to capitalists.)
The agorist says to a socialist, “You are my friend, to the degree you agree with the non-initiation of force. You stand with me, in opposition to systematic theft and oppression. You stand with me, on the side of liberty and equality. You are my ally.”
This thinking seems pretty radical to me, because I came to market anarchism via the “right-wing” route - Ron Paul, Constitutionalism, Milton Friedman, minarchism, then Rothbard and Block, and then anarchism. So, a week ago, I would have ageed completely with the ancap position above. For example, my definition of socialism is : 1- government ownership of the means of production 2- social system predicated on economic ignorance. With that in mind, I don’t see socialists as anything near libertarianism.
Are there any left libertarians who can offer a clarification of the agorist position towards socialists? How do you resolve the fact that socialists use coercion as a means to achieving their goals? Or that they are completely clueless of economics?
P.S. I foresee that this thread will be coherent ONLY if people define their terms -especially the anti-concepts “capitalism” and “socialism”.
I am an agorist myself, and I see nothing wrong with what Zhwazi says there - but only so long as we restrict the definition of “socialist” to voluntary, non-state socialists. I don’t know whether Zhwazi means it in that way. I know Konkin did.
I believe in limited alliance with anyone who believes in decreasing the state power, and true alliance with anyone who believes in doing away with it. However - most socialists, even the “anarcho-” kind, are necessarily statists, because they would use force to make other people be socialist.
There seems to be a tendency among some of the libertarian left to gladly accept anyone who calls themselves an anarchist, even if what they mean by “anarchy” has nothing to do with non-aggression. So I would certainly modify the discussion to represent state socialism and non-state socialism clearly, and pick our allies more carefully.
Cooperation with socialists is only desirable and feasible to the extent that they are voluntaryists - if they’re statists (and this includes various “anarcho”-communists who’d like to ban market relations), then they’re not worth addressing even.
These people aren’t libertarians, and they aren’t for freedom. They are arrogant scum.
The agorist says to a socialist, "You are my friend, to the degree you agree with the non-initiation of force. You stand with me, in opposition to systematic theft and oppression.
Oh really? Against systematic theft? What the hell!? Oh, I’m sorry, these people are capitalists…
You stand with me, on the side of liberty and equality. You are my ally.
Socialists are on the side of liberty? The liberty to control others’ wages, prices, income, and lives. These drones will be voting for Hope and Change this Novemeber, count on it.
Some of the most venomous debates I’ve ever seen online were between argorists and a socialist but in the real world they seemed to get along ok. Most of my youth was spent around socialists and anarcho-syndicalists even though I openly disagreed with many of their positions. If it’s a state socialist I’d say there’s not going to be much support.
Cooperation with socialists is out of the question for me. When a political movement explicitly endorses lying to achieve its ends you can never be certain where you stand with them. Don’t forget the America First movement was an alliance between classical liberals and the socialists. The commies turned on a dime the instant the Germans invaded the USSR. All those heartfelt calls for peace had been just so much political theater. And what about the left’s war mongering during the Bosnian war? Anybody find those missing 200,000 muslim men yet? They wail for us to get out of Iraq, but remember we are still in the Balkans.
PS: No offense but it strikes me that you seem to be skating through the ideological landscape pretty quickly.
It’s senseless to discriminate too much on who we ally or don’t ally with. In politics, as in war, you choose your enemies but not your friends. Don’t reject someone because their beliefs are wrong. Until they act out those beliefs they can be redeemed.
During the occupation in France, the most devoted resisters were from two antagonistic groups: the traditional catholic nobility, and communists. They worked together against their common enemy because they needed to.
On the contrary, I think it’s quite clear from our alliance with the Soviets during the World Wars, and later from our alliances with Middle Eastern despotisms during the Cold War that an unqualified acceptence of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a stupid and even quite deadly strategem.
Not rejecting someone and forming an alliance with them are two very different things. When you make an alliance you guarantee them a share in whatever you gain in victory. The Allies contributed greatly to the Soviet Empire through that sharing, and created much of the Middle Eastern tyrants’ power through the same means. If we ally ourselves with statist socialist, and that includes the ones who call themselves “anarchists” yet believe in aggression against propertarians, we had better expect a long and bitter struggle against them later on.
Sorry but that is just a myth. The commies worked against the French government and for Hitler when France was being invaded. They were neither the most numerous nor the most effective resistance fighters during the war. And after the war they launched a vicious campaign of terror against “collaborators” - most of whom had merely acquiesced - in order to distract from and cover up their own complicity early in the war.
Paul Gotfried covers this topic in one of his mp3 files in the media section. I can’t remember now if it was covered in
Stalinism, National Socialism and Fascism or Bolshevism and Democratic Socialism. They are both worth listening to though.
Yes, of course. But not outlawing non-state socialism after our hypothetical stateless society has been established hardly requires an alliance with state socialism before hand.
It seems that our terms haven’t really been defined as the OP asks. What precisely is meant by the term “socialism”? Government ownership of the means of production? Worker or public ownership of the means of production? Participatory democracy? Government and public ownership actually contradict eachother.
I didn’t get very specific. In principle, I’m neutral to any socialist who doesn’t wish to force it onto me. I don’t have a problem allying with mutualists and classic individualist anarchists. Most of the anarcho-commies and anarcho-syndicalists creep me out though.