Ah, so you believe you can bring about the total collapse of the state while 99% of the people cling to it and see it as the only viable option? Good luck with that.
That’s how every other revolution worked out.
This idea of a sudden abandonment of government is fallacious. As long as most people believe that a government is good and necessary, then we’ll probably have one.
The state will be abolished by competition. Agorist regions will grow and multiply until private protection agencies can outcompete the government. Then the virtues of the free society will starve and strangle the government territory until it shrinks into nothingness.
Thus, abolitionism in theory, gradualism in practice.
Has anyone considered going the opposite route → using the vote to escalate the conflict between agorists and the state?
It seems that for those people who deeply believe there is little hope in political victory could at least vote for the most authoritarian candidate every election. If there are enough people to do this and serve as a swing voting bloc, it could cause us to see increasingly authoritarian candidates. And with every authoritarian put into power, there are thousands of potential agorists now completely upset with their government.
Basically, we’d be racketeering - using our vote to have the state harm others, to sway greater scores of people that the whole process is corrupt and immoral.
Then again, i’m not sure what we’d actually be looking for in candidates. We already have a pretty authoritarian system. It seems like we’d need just plain ridiculous laws, like felonies for wearing matching shoes. I mean we already have a practical degree of censorship, etc. We have a drug war. Do we need to prohibit alcohol and guns? Do we need mandated diets and excercise? Do we need “population control”?
It’s an interesting question. Indeed, in supporting Ron Paul, I felt in some ways selfish and conflicted. I believe that a Ron Paul presidency could really make things better for those alive now, and even for a couple more generations. I do not, however, believe that it would do anything to keep the current state of affairs from eventually arising again. Thus, all we’d really be doing is pushing the motivation for a real change off for another few generations; condemning future people because we were too cowardly to do what really needed to be done.
Of course, it looks like not even the Ron Paul semi-solution is really on the table anymore, so my dilemma is resolved for me.
Except those revolutions just changed the way the state did business. They never put an end to the state. And what you are overlooking is that revolutions succeeded because they enjoyed popular support from the masses.
So is our revolution. We are not going to attack the state but the law that empowers the state. Once we have succeeded, nothing has changed in people’s lives, at least superficially. A new process of law gradually eliminates the powers of the state until it becomes just one more enterprise among many others.
The revolution therefore does not create any instability or chaos, but results in an unprecedented economic prosperity that subverts popular reluctance.
Popular support from the masses is just a marketing problem.
People will support government as long as government is their only protector. More oppression will have no positive results so long as the monopoly of protection is not abolished.
Indeed, you are correct. This is why such a strategy would be a mere piece of whole. The other means would be:
education - about why the state is an unstoppable criminal institution that will encroach upon society to acheive its own ends at all expenses, without regard to public safety or prosperity, and how history confirms this. also explain why there are no real limits on government power, despite any pieces of paper or “checks and balances”. Obviously, the only real check is self-defense, violent if necessary. but even more important is showing that anarchy is not chaos or lawlessness and how society does not need to rely on monopolistic public institutions for defense. unfortunately, there is very little historical evidence to show this.
substitution - all those “protective” services that the state provides must be offered through agorist or other private methods. THIS INCLUDES “ECONOMIC PROTECTION”. We will get nowhere if we don’t create viable insurance, pension, and charity programs that can replace state welfarism to the degree that people who are whole-heartedly addicted to the belief that capitalism cannot justfully distribute wealth find enough security to shun the state. Likewise, there must be private security, courts, etc. that can be used in place of the police or army, which will become especially popular if they are able to defend individuals against state encroachments, particularly the IRS.
I have to be honest, agorism sounds like voodoo to me. What are you going to do once the political means come knocking at your door?
I’d add, anarchy is not a society that is strictly governed by the non-aggression principle. That would be Utopia. Rather, anarchy results when no single person or group can maintain a monopoly on force, thus presenting the best chance you’re going to see on Earth for the NAP to be followed.
Blackwater is exclusively a government contractor at this point but I think it represents a sea change in how government soldiers view themselves. It is a small step from Blackwater to truly private institutions outbidding government for military talent. The big break will come when nobody will cash the government’s checks and soldiers have to beg for food. When this happened in the USSR the nation-states stepped into the void and continued taxing and providing public services. The US is not a traditional nation-state so when the break-up occurs people will have only the pre-state institutions to fall back on. From my perspective, that’s the plus side to the government’s importation of different nations.
Isn’t that the world we have now? There are several competing governments, none of which have a monopoly on the use of force.
They all have a monopoly over given territories, which they recognize to one another.
Agorism isn’t simply black and grey market activity, with a dumb-founded hope that the state won’t catch on. It may start out as defenseless risk-taking against the government’s will, but eventually it can develop institutions that defend individuals from state oppression.
Look at drug crime, which is very, very small scale agorist, although it misses the point. Some people take risks, and when the police come knocking on their door, they go quietly. Others resist, attempting to destroy evidence and/or fight police. When drug-dealing gangs see the police take out their competition, they usually enjoy it, because it means their business is more profitable. Some businesses spring up to help such people accomplish these goals. They sell fake household items to hide drugs, etc.
Or consider how the mob does it. They don’t have to fight them at their door. They fight them by corrupting police and judges, intimidating witnesses, destroying evidence, and providing false evidence of innocense.
The difference between organized criminal efforts and agorism is that agorism is a general community, whereas crime syndicates are competing special interests. Agorists wish to protect fellow agorists. The agorist community would consist of many different forms of economic activity. Thus, more agorists are mutually beneficial, rather than competitive. Thus, agorist communities wish to outsource their protection from the state into specialized industry, rather than “go it alone”. The best and most loyal services would be profitable.
Consider lawyers who fight the state in tax evasion cases. The better they are at winning the cases, the more valuable their services are. This is similar to protective services in the agorist community. The better able they are able to corrupt police and the judicial system, or fight these things, to protect their customers from the full ramifications of the law, the more valuable they are.
Agorists in the later stages would be more frightened for the policemen who come knocking on their door than themselves in such a situation. Of course, getting from here to there is a big problem. That’s why I’m wondering if we could use the state and its voting process to force peaceful citizens hell-bent on their lifestyle to become agorists, as an alternative to living in fear.
Of course, the other problem is making sure that protection services don’t become obsessed with the ends over the means and become anti-libertarians in the process (threatening or harming peaceful non-agorists who simply comply with the state, in providing testimony for instance). Ultimately, society has to realize that if it wants arbitrary use of violence, that’s what it will get. Agorists must fully commit to the non-initiation of violence, and justice over wrath.
I hope I didn’t come off as trying to say revolution creates instability or chaos. If I did I’m sorry that’s not what I meant. My main argument is that it will take all manner of strategies to reduce the state to nothing. I firmly believe we need to develop alternative markets and currencies as well as do more to educate people about anarchism while working politically to reduce the power of the state by eliminating taxation and their monopoly on force. I see this as a multi-front war against the state and if one front doesn’t break through then we still have two or three or five or more fronts that could do the job. We disagree but at least we have the same goals in mind.
You’re right about that.
If you recognize that the government will fight you, then you need an organization to provide for your protection from the government. In other words you need a political party, although not necessarily one that will contest elections.
You’re getting ahead of yourself. These things are outlawed. Until we can force a change in law, we are not going to develop an alternative without being the target of retaliation.
Whatever fronts we may be fighting on, there is only one strategically-significant center of decision: what is lawful. Once we capture that, everything else falls into place.
Correct. The world we have now would only be anarchy if people could switch government patronage whenever they wished. Governments would then be market participants bidding for capital and talent. There is something like this going on in places like Dubai, Monaco, and perhaps some Caribbean island nations. Things may even evolve to the point where patronage would not depend on geography.
This.
Could you be more specific? I’d like to see this thread continue.