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After several posts regarding causes of the riots in France:

• Riots in Paris: The continuing crises of statism
• Root causes of the Paris riots
• Paris riots: immigration is not the problem
• French riots: talking sense to right wing friends

…a correspondent asks:

“My question, though, is what is to be done?”

That’s an incredibly important question, and actually — I’m working on a book about the topic generally, rather than in regard to France in particular. I’ll try to hit the most important points.

Please don’t think me facetious when I say there are two ways to interpret the question. That’s actually, in my opinion, crucial to understand. We could ask what is to be done as individuals, or we could ask what is to be done in terms of public policy.

When we succumb to the temptation to try to formulate public policy, we are essentially asking “What would be the best way to rule?”

I am an anarchist. I believe that coercive rulership is itself inherently wrong and look forward to its abolition. I believe that tyranny, the State, is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. To ask what public policy would be best in a given case is comparable to searching for the best way to feed and care for ones own tumor.

When we ask how to rule, we are subtly encouraging ourselves to identify with the ruling class. That works to our own detriment, in the long run, because the political class subsists upon the productive class parasitically. To identify with the State is nothing less than another manifestation of Stockholm syndrome or the twisted loyalty of the abused to their abuser in a domestic violence situation.

So what about anti-state propagandists and agitators? Are we just whining and complaining without offering a coherent and constructive alternative?

No! Rather, we need to be more conscious of our own role. We are not policy wonks. We’re cult de-programmers.

As I said before in a seperate post:

“If your goal is a world where:

1. Bandits, such as the State, are successfully suppressed by institutions of private law, and…

2. Excuses for such bandits (political ideology) are dismissed by almost all as the nonsensical superstitions they are…

Then two things are required to reach that goal:

1. Counter-establishment economic activity (counter-economics — a.k.a. “the black market”) is the only tool that can eventually build institutions of security and law independent of state control. In the mean time, it makes peoples lives better for themselves here and now.
2. State-glorifying political superstition can only be combated with the truth — the whole truth, delivered unflinchingly, relentlessly and unyieldingly; rather than watered down rhetorical tripe designed to get people elected by not challenging existing superstitions to uncomfortably.

Because counter-economics focuses on making peoples lives better here and now, it’s something useful that people can incorporate into their lives, yet it lays the groundwork for eventually laying the state low. In complementary fashion, fighting political superstition provides the environment, in terms of mass psychology, for counter-economics to
germinate and bloom.” — from “And your politics are boring, too!”

Samuel Edward Konkin III’s New Libertarian Manifesto describes (among other things) a phased process of anti-state revolution as counter-economic “economic development”, with most (if any) open
conflict occurring towards the end of the revolution.

As a followup to reading Konkin, one might also look over where I described why a genuinely anarchist revolution of necessity (nay, by definition) has to follow an anti-political course, of which Konkin’s agorism is the best example I’ve found. I did that a few weeks ago in an article for Rational Review entitled “Notes on building a theory of revolution“.

I realize this may present an entirely different way of thinking for many who are reading this blog. Consider it carefully.

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Tags: Politics //