And your politics are boring, too!
Libertarians might want to pay attention to critiques of the Marxoid-traditionalist varieties of anarchism from some of the so-called “post-left” anarchist thinkers. Don’t go looking for talking points. Just look at the overall patterns and see what you can learn. For example, Nadia C. would sound like she has your average minarchist, or other political reformist libertarian, perfectly pegged in the essay “Your Politics Are Boring As Fuck” — except that the essay is addressed not to Libertarian Party members, but to anarcho-communists.
“Face it, your politics are boring as fuck.
You know it’s true. Otherwise, why does everyone cringe when you say the word? Why has attendance at your anarcho-communist theory discussion group meetings fallen to an all—time low? Why has the oppressed proletariat not come to its senses and joined you in your fight for world liberation?
Perhaps, after years of struggling to educate them about their victimhood, you have come to blame them for their condition. They must want to be ground under the heel of capitalist imperialism; otherwise, why do they show no interest in your political causes?”
If you take away the jargon, does that sound familiar to any libertarians out there? It ought to.
Continuing on and answering the questions posed:
“The truth is, your politics are boring to them because they really are irrelevant. They know that your antiquated styles of protest—your marches, hand held signs, and gatherings—are now powerless to effect real change because they have become such a predictable part of the status quo. They know that your post-Marxist jargon is off-putting because it really is a language of mere academic dispute, not a weapon capable of undermining systems of control. They know that your infighting, your splinter groups and endless quarrels over ephemeral theories can never effect any real change in the world they experience from day to day. They know that no matter who is in office, what laws are on the books, what “ism”s the intellectuals march under, the content of their lives will remain the same. They—we—know that our boredom is proof that these “politics” are not the key to any real transformation of life. For our lives are boring enough already!”
The astute reader will see a critique of political reformism generally that’s very applicable to the libertarian movement.
The tragedy of political reformism is that politics, properly understood, is crucial to defending human life and authentic civilization. Everywhere the State chokes off life and opportunities, like some sort of gigantic death machine. By constraining resistance to the State within the tame channels of political reformism, so-called mainstream libertarians buttress rather than combat the State. Nadia hits on that phenomenon here:
“You actually do us all a real disservice with your tiresome, tedious politics. For in fact, there is nothing more important than politics. NOT the politics of American “democracy” and law, of who is elected state legislator to sign the same bills and perpetuate the same system. Not the politics of the “I got involved with the radical left because I enjoy quibbling over trivial details and writing rhetorically about an unreachable utopia” anarchist. Not the politics of any leader or ideology that demands that you make sacrifices for “the cause.” But the politics of our everyday lives. When you separate politics from the immediate, everyday experiences of individual men and women, it becomes completely irrelevant. Indeed, it becomes the private domain of wealthy, comfortable intellectuals, who can trouble themselves with such dreary, theoretical things. When you involve yourself in politics out of a sense of obligation, and make political action into a dull responsibility rather than an exciting game that is worthwhile for its own sake, you scare away people whose lives are already far too dull for any more tedium. When you make politics into a lifeless thing, a joyless thing, a dreadful responsibility, it becomes just another weight upon people, rather than a means to lift weight from people. And thus you ruin the idea of politics for the people to whom it should be most important. For everyone has a stake in considering their lives, in asking themselves what they want out of life and how they can get it. But you make politics look to them like a miserable, self-referential, pointless middle class/bohemian game, a game with no relevance to the real lives they are living out.”
In the works of Murray Rothbard and related thinkers, libertarians have described for them a magnificent goal, a market anarchist society. While Rothbard was an astoundingly brilliant polymath, I don’t believe he was ever accused of being a great tactician or strategist. It fell to Sam Konkin to make the breakthrough of understanding that the problem of birthing that society is one of economic development, rather than political activism as conventionally understood. That is Agorism.
If your goal is a world where:
- Bandits, such as the State, are successfully suppressed by institutions of private law, and…
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
If fun and enjoyment are understood as personal benefit, a form of profit, then the joyous anti-State activism encouraged by the likes of Nadia C. represent people stumbling toward agorism — not because of economic theory, but out of experience with what is unworkable about political reformist movements of any stripe (even avowedly anarchist ones). Their organizations, such as Nadia’s CrimethInc, are examples of proto-Agoristic revolutionary entrepreneurship.
That which is radical is also the practical.
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[...] 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.” — And your politics are boring, too! [...]