While it’s not a comprehensive answer in my opinion, we can find a good starting point in distinguishing agorism from anarcho-capitalism in this interview with SEK3:
Q: What are the main differences between left-libertarianism/agorism and anarcho-capitalism?
SEK3 - There are several ways of looking at this, from a theoretical view, from a strategic view, with left jargon, with right terminology, etc., but it’s a fair question.
In theory, those calling themselves anarcho-capitalists (I believe Jarrett Wollstein, in his defection from Objectivism, coined the term back in early 1968) do not differ drastically from agorists; both claim to want anarchy (statelessness, and we pretty much agree on the definition of the State as a monopoly of legitimized coercion, borrowed from Rand and reinforced by Rothbard). But the moment we apply the ideology to the real world (as the Marxoids say, “Actually Existing Capitalism” [1]) we diverge on several points immediately.
First and foremost, agorists stress the Entrepreneur, see non-statist Capitalists (in the sense of holders of capital, not necessary ideologically aware) as relatively neutral drone-like non-innovators, and pro-statist Capitalists as the main Evil in the political realm[2]. Hence our favorable outlook toward “conspiracy theory” fans, even when we think they’re misled or confused. As for the Workers and Peasants, we find them an embarrassing relic from a previous Age at best and look forward to the day that they will die out [3] from lack of market demand (hence my phrase, deliberately tweaking the Marxoids, “liquidation of the Proletariat”). One can sum that up in the vulgar phrase, “If the State had been abolished a century ago, we’d all have robots and summer homes in the Asteroid belt.”
The “Anarcho-capitalists” tend to conflate the Innovator (Entrepreneur) and Capitalist[4], much as the Marxoids and cruder collectivists do. (It’s interesting that the gradual victory of Austrian Economics, particularly in Europe, has led to some New Leftists at least to take our claim seriously that the Capitalist and Entrepreneur are very different classes requiring different analyses, and attempt to grapple with the problem [from their point of view] that creates for them.)
Agorists are strict Rothbardians, and, I would argue in this case, even more Rothbardian than Rothbard [5], who still had some of the older confusion in his thinking. But he was Misesian, and Mises made the original distinction between Innovators/Arbitrageurs and Capital-holders (i.e., mortgage-holders, coupon-clippers, financiers, worthless heirs, landlords, etc.). With the Market largely moving to the ‘net, it is becoming ever-more pure entrepreneurial, leaving the brick ‘n’ mortar “capitalist” behind.
But it is dealing with current politics and current defence where Agorists most strongly differ from “anarcho-capitalists.” A-caps generally (and they have lots of individual variation) believe in involvement with existing political parties (libertarian, Republican, even Democrat and Socialist, such as the Canadian NDP), and, in the extreme case, even support the Pentagon and U.S. Defense complex to fight communism (I wonder what their excuse is now?) until we somehow get to abolishing the State. Agorists, as you have undoubtedly picked up, are revolutionary; we don’t see the market triumphing without the collapse of the State and its ruling caste, and, as I point out in New Libertarian Manifesto, historically, they just don’t go without unleashing senseless violence on the usually peaceful revolutionaries who then defend themseelves.
My notes:
[1] For an excellent indictment of “actually existing capitalism” as a statist phenomenon (i.e. state tainted markets; property title fraudulently held by state allies, et cetera) rather than a free market , refer to Kevin Carson’s The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Corporate Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege. While Carson is a mutualist rather than an agorist, he has himself noted the obvious — that his historical work (such as the above) can pretty much be argued for on purely Rothbardian grounds. Agorists do so.
[2] Refer to New Left historian Gabriel Kolko’s work “The Triumph of Conservatism” and C. Wright Mills‘ work on power elite theory. Rothbard incorporated these into radical libertarian class theory deriving from the “industrial” or liberal class theory of Comte and Dunoyer. Konkin radically refined Rothbard’s work into agorist class theory.
Very important is the recognition that, when speaking of the purported property of the capitalists (holders of capital) among the political class, “Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title” as Karl Hess put it. Anarcho-capitalism never rose to Hess’s challenge, despite the ability of Rothbardian property theory to address it. Agorist revolutionary theory, positing emergence of revolutionary security and arbitration enterprises from underground, does so. The agorists are free to ignore fraudulent property title of state allies that the anarcho-capitalists (trapped in conservatism and political reformism) can’t ignore for systemic and cultural, rather than purely ideological, reasons.
[3] It should be noted here that Konkin did not want workers themselves to literally die, but for the working class, in Marx’s words, to “abolish itself as a class” — by becoming the revolutionary entrepreneuriat Konkin foresaw.
[4] This an-cap tendency Konkin speaks of is very closely related to Carson’s identification of the tendency he calls “vulgar libertarianism” — conflating the results of statist market intervention with a free market. An-caps typically downplay, soft-pedal, ignore and, in some cases, are completely unaware of their own class theory. While they rightfully denounce loudly the state as banditry, their eyes glaze over once the wealth the state steals has been transferred to some state allied plutocrat not literally on a civil service payroll (e.g Haliburton). They typically contradict their own (Rothbardian) property theory by defending the possessors of stolen loot as if they were legitimate property owners. When they don’t, they still typically fail to conceive of any way to act on it. In this manner, anarcho-capitalism becomes the perpetuation of injustice.
Where does this inconsistency between the existing anarcho-capitalist movement and Rothbardian ideology come from? Rothbard failed to completely understand the full implications of his ideas on class and never himself developed a theory of revolution. Not trusting the state to redistribute property, that being the problem in the first place, an-caps with no theory of revolution have no idea how to address the issue of state stolen property — an issue big enough to have largely sparked the entire socialist movement in the first place! Konkin accomplished this within the Rothbardian tradition, though. Konkinites are agorists.
[5] See [4] above. Rothbardian property theory can not, for all practical purposes, be fully applied in the absence of agorist class theory and the agorist theory of revolution. Doing so, though, makes agorists more left wing than any statist Bolshevik. By providing a theoretical framework for the revolutionary redistribution of property, agorism is arguably socialist, despite Konkin’s negative use of the term socialism to refer solely to state socialism — yet agorism is also the purest and most radical form of free-market libertarianism.
Tags: Politics by Brad Spangler
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