Three avenues of revolutionary action
Wally Conger has posted an excellent excerpt from The Agorist Institute Report to Supporters, Vol. 2, No. 1, Winter 1996 he titled “What is Agorism?”
I should note here that this is a good opportunity to illustrate where my current views might diverge ever so slightly from those of SEK3.
That libertarian philosophy which rejects aboveground political activity as inescapably statist and defends the Counter-Economy is agorism.
That depends on what you mean by political. Agorists reject political reformism. Clearly, though, SEK3 recognized the need for revolutionary propaganda. He spent his life creating a great deal of it. He also explicitly condoned traditional anarchist direct action in time of war. Most people would call those political activities even though they take place outside the statist framework of electioneering and offering of policy proposals for the state to follow.
As one will note by reading New Libertarian Manifesto, agorists do not reject armed struggle but do condemn premature attempts at it as counter-revolutionary — up until the phase transition from Stage 3 to Stage 4 of Konkin’s strategy. Even then, armed struggle may or may not occur and the matter won’t really be in the hands of agorists to decide. It will depend on how violent the State’s attempt at counter-revolution at that point is. While I personally am pessimistic about the prospects for avoiding the necessity of armed struggle at that point, I have to concede that the State could theoretically be brought down without it.
What we’re left with for the interim is what I’m labeling the Three Avenues of Revolutionary Action that I’m hoping will become accepted as a clearer default statement of what agorists do in lieu of political reformist activity such as electioneering and lobbying of the state.
- Counter-economics
- Propaganda
- Direct Action
We can not abandon counter-economics. It is our hope for the future and the very essence of our revolutionary message and means. Agorism needs to be promoted as an ideology by revolutionary propaganda, though, and that’s primarily what I’ve decided to concentrate on personally. Finally, non-violent direct action can be viewed as an extension of the propaganda struggle as well as an opportunity to engage, network with and cooperate with the broader left. For those reasons, I would argue for broader agorist acceptance of direct action beyond primarily just opposition to war as SEK3 preferred.
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