Agorism.info downtime
The site Agorism.info will be down and/or looking funny for most of the rest of today while I experiment with converting the site over to Dokuwiki.
This will not impact the German, French, Portugese or [new] Polish agorism sites. Speaking of Polish agorists, they apparently got Roderick to sit down for an interview recently while on his trip to Kraków.
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I have a question, not with regard to Roderick or anything. I noticed that Chuck Munson posted this article on Infoshop. Until recently it seems, he’s been one of the most consistent crusaders against recognition of agorism/anarcho-”capitalism.” After noticing that he makes several reference to you on his blog, I wonder if maybe you had something to do with this. Did you sit down and have a conversation at the Crossroads infoshop at some point?
I ask because I’ve come up with a lot of resistance in trying to communicate left-libertarian ideas with libertarian socialists, and I was hoping this experience, if true, might have yielded some tips.
The slash mark you added between agorism and “anarcho-capitalism” is kind of at odds with the point I make over and over again, which is that they’re not the same thing. The addition of Konkin’s theory of revolution, better developed class theory and anti-political approach allows the incipient anti-capitalist implications of the Rothbardian strain of market anarchism (that agorism is built on and extends) to be more fully realized. The Strike Bike post is an example.
I feel comfortable saying that I’m anti-capitalist because if we take Carson’s mutualist exposition “The Iron Fist Behind The Invisible Hand” as an acceptable description of “capitalism”, then that is something I am 100% against and have been all along. I don’t have to agree with Carson about usufruct or the labor theory of value in order to agree with that particular Carson article — because I’m fundamentally a radical ultra-Rothbardian and Carson basically used a radical Rothbardian approach in his analysis.
Being anti-capitalist is simply not negotiable for our friends at Infoshop. Fortunately, Carson showed me I am anti-capitalist and basically have been all along. That’s another reason why I don’t call myself an anarcho-capitalist anymore. But it isn’t just a re-labeling process. People can smell a bullshit artist a mile away. You have to really mean it and there has to be an attitude shift.
Think of it like the Klingons eventually joining the Federation. Yes, we’re the Klingons.
Brad has had alot to do with the softening of my position vis a vis the “anarcho-capitalists.” Brad is a smart guy and very good about precisely explaining his views. He doesn’t just adopt a label and leave it at that. Brad has also been a very interesting contributor to our discussion group and our infoshop here in Kansas City.
I’ve also mellowed a bunch after participating in some incredibly irritating and pointless fights on Wikipedia. I spent several months fighting some user on Wikipedia who claimed to be an anarcho-capitalist and fought with me over including Rothbard in the “Anarchism in the United States” entry. After doing some research of my own archives, I found that Rothbard has had some influence on mainstream anarchism. I got to the point where I was ready to compromise with the other guy, only to discover that Wikipedia had banned him permanently for trolling under a half dozen user names.
It’s things like this that help one understand that endless flamewars on the Internet are a waste of time.
I still maintain that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. I’m not going to push this point as much as I used to, because I think there are people out there like Brad who can explain the nuances of mutualism, or whatever you want to call it, so we’ll probably stop hearing from right-wing libertarians who want to adopt the anarcho-capitalist label to sell some sexed up crap being concocted at the Cato Institute.
I’m also tired of the constant bickering over labels that goes on in libertarian and anarchist circles. Let’s move beyond labels and talk about ideas and where we have common cause to work together.
I also think that the writing that Carson, Spangler and others are doing from a mutualist perspective holds out some promise of improving and updating anarchist theories on economics.
[...] to Konkin’s agorism and the resulting “anti-political” approach. As I noted in a blog comment: “The slash mark you added between agorism and “anarcho-capitalism” is kind of at [...]