What's so great about Agorism?

agora -

n. pl. ag·o·rae (-r) or ag·o·ras

A place of congregation, especially an ancient Greek marketplace.

As any skinny, ink-spattered punk claiming to be an Anarchist will assert revolutionary violence is the only answer against the toxic tentacles of the state. Albert Einstein, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were all woefully wrong. Only the heat from a molotov cocktail or a shattered Starbucks street front window can force Goliath to genuflect. But governments are serpents coiling and squeezing around those who struggle for breath with three heads ready to replace any one that's severed.

From a distance what's a more absurd sight than a handful of hooded vegans taking arms against the largest military power ever amassed. Time to lock away your Schwinns, Mr. & Ms. Anarchist, Lady Liberty is packing heat and she will end you faster than you can say "In God We Trust."

Unless, there's a better way...

In the late '70s and early '80s a germ of an idea wafted through the subterranean corridors of Anarchist philosophy. What if there was a theory of social organization which involved markets that appealed to both the revolutionary left and the revolutionary right. Easier said than done. Right-Libertarians made attempts at reaching across the aisle to their left-wing brothers and sisters for years but alas their arms proved to be much too short. The man responsible for achieving great strides toward bridging this schism was Samuel Edward Konkin III also known as SEK3 on the streets. Konkin devised a concept of Anarchism which brought in the labor-centered, class-intensive focus of the left and married it with the Austrian economics of the right. He named it Agorism after the agora or marketplaces of Ancient Greece.

So, what's so great about Agorism? It recognizes that violence can't be met with violence. Of course by now it's just a cliche but aggression is cyclical. The best way to destroy a rotten idea (i.e. the state) is to replace it with a better one (i.e. voluntary exchange). Never a reformist, SEK3 decided the only logical form this revolution could take would be counter-economic meaning through black and gray markets, barter networks and local currencies. These counter-economies would naturally begin as tiny, grassroots cells then grow organically as they demonstrated they could deliver better quality goods and services cheaper without the burden of state mandated licensure and taxation. Think it's just a pipe dream? Well, think again. Counter-economies existed in the past in the Pacific Northwest in Canada with Indigenous Potlatch Festivals, and are being maintained in the present with Sustainable Communities some of which have their very own monetary system.

Agorism has also refurbished old chestnuts like Marx's and Engels' Class Theory. Everybody knows their views and its faults so they won't be rehashed here. From the ashheap of Marxism, Agorist Class Theory holds on to the two-class divide, yet, where the Communists get a little kookie is when they omit the state as a pestilential force. How odd, it seemed to be right there in front of their noses. The actual partition is between the politically connected and the economically productive. Robber Barons, Military Personnel and Politicians comprise the former while Entrepreneurs and Workers fill the latter. Of course, there are dynamic gradations between the classes all established by one's orientation to the bulbous, dangling teats of the state.

Beyond Agorism's appeal to pragmatism there is a sense of unity between all schools of Anarchist thought as one of its features. Since Anarchism's inception Anarchists haven't even been able to agree on how to change a light bulb let alone agree upon anything else. There are some hardliners on both sides who do readily dismiss this relatively new approach. Little do they realize the serpent cannot be decapitated. Only through non-participation will it eventually starve to death.