Agorism

Agorism, the voluntary society. To pursue agorism in your society you would have seek personal responsibility for your health, education and welfare with other like minded people of a community through voluntary means. An Agorist community is the result of free assemblies of individuals that demonstrate a concern and care for the rights, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of others equal to their own personal desires for themselves. From the social and emotional bonds created by consistent voluntary interaction will alter the hearts and mind of that society which may then develop an alternate economy upon the foundation of mutual care.

Agorism

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Agorism is a libertarian social philosophy that advocates creating a society in which all relations between people are voluntary.

Others add to that philosophy by further advocating that exchanges can only be made by means of counter-economics, thus engaging with aspects of peaceful revolution.

Counter-economics is supposed to be "the study or practice of all peaceful human action which is forbidden by the State", the term is short for "counter-establishment economics".

By its nature "counter-establishment economics" commonly does not allow the "establishment" to be free of its counter establishment activities. Its opposition to what "the state" and the establishment created by the presence of the state seems to be the driving force of an agorism culture. That may be insufficient drive to provide the cohesion required to maintain a free society.

Derrick Broze writes in the article "What is Agorism? A History of Agorist Theory and Practice" in regard to the rise of a Peruvian subculture:

Faced with ongoing violence and the Maoist rhetoric of The Shining Path on one side, and statist regulation and theft on the other, the people of Peru chose to travel to the countryside and create informal marketplaces for trading, ridesharing, and housing. This is what free thinking people will do when faced with the constant threat of theft and bureaucracy. Eventually, the people tire of having every aspect of their lives invaded by the state, so they will seek outside solutions. This may include reformist schemes like electoral politics and voting, or possibly violent revolt. Counter-economics and agorism offer a third path towards liberty. A path that is peaceful, consistent and reflects the realities we see unfolding in the world today.

Agorism is the ideology of a society that supposedly promotes the open "marketplace untainted by theft, assault, or fraud". Yet, many begin that society with the intent to defraud the established society.

Even though Agorism professes the hope for a humanly attained free society, the common agorist seems far to ready to deny natural debt that establishes a social compact through common practices of society under natural law, and even deny generational inheritance of debt.

It has been said that 'A free society is the only one in which each and everyone of its participants can satisfy his or her subjective values without crushing others' values by violence and coercion.' That approach should beg the question as to where subjective values begin and common or appropriate natural values begin?

What is conducive to the life of the individual is conducive to the life of a free society.

Samuel Edward Konkin III characterized agorism as a form of left-libertarianism (specifically, left-wing market anarchism) and generally that agorism is imagined to be a strategic branch of market anarchism.

Free-market anarchism, or market anarchism, is an economic system based on voluntary, free-market interactions without the involvement of the state.

Mutualists such as Kevin Carson and Gary Chartier consider themselves anti-capitalists and identify as part of the socialist movement. Socialism is not a voluntary society. It compels the actions of the individual through the collective political power. By definition Socialism has never, and never will, produce a society in which all relations between people are voluntary.

Socialism is is an economic and political system. The political power to produce and redistribute wealth and enforce economic policies will be in the hands of the collective or its elected representatives.

Capitalism is not a political system and therefore is the only way in which a truly voluntary society can function. In a capitalist society the means of production is in the hands of the individual not the collective nor corporate State.

Konkin and J. Neil Schulman opposed each other concerning the concept of intellectual property. Konkin wrote in an article entitled "Copywrongs" in support of such a thesis. Schulman criticized his ideas in "Informational Property: Logorights". They are both opposed to the laws of the State that produced monopolies.

Few seem to grasp the idea that only a moral society of people who care about their neighbor as much as themselves can produce a truly free society.

Natural man

Many advocates of agorism seem to lack an understanding of where the power of the state existed before it became corporate body politic. The power of the state, the potestas and the imperium, existed in the natural man before the State.

Hobbes, imagined that the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented society.

John Locke, saw the State of Nature as the natural condition of mankind. To him, it was a state of perfect and complete liberty to conduct one's life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others. Again the morality of society is dependent upon the morality in the heart of its participants.

Lady Godiva was the white agorist who stripped her wealth not her body to provide for the needy of society rather than see her husband Leofric III become one of those Benefactors who exercised authority. Like early Israel and the Levites she knew without freewill offerings through charity the nation would not remain free.

The State of Nature is only "completely intolerable" when men are brutal and intolerable. The moral man does not need the politics of Cain, Nimrod, nor Caesar to subdue his brute nature.

According to Pufendorf, “The lex fundamentalis of natural law is the duty of every man, so far as in him lies, to strive that the welfare of human society in general be secured and maintained”

The definition of religion used to be the performance of these natural duties to our families, neighbor and fundamental duties to society and neighboring societies.

Without the respect and care for the previous generation and the inclusion Pure Religion in the philosophy of the agorist society, their days will not be long upon the land.

Rousseau had more than one distinct theory of a social contract. One was the naturalized account of the social contract and the other was his normative, or idealized theory. Rousseau also thought the State of Nature was a peaceful and quixotic time. Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau may all be correct about the State of Nature and the natural law depending on whose society they ponder in their examination, Abel and Seth or Cain.

Derrick Broze gives only three other examples of "stateless societies" in his article quoted above saying, "medieval Iceland, James Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, and Pierre Clastres’ Society Against the State."

Agorists seldom mention early Israel where "there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." There was no property tax, sales tax, income tax. There was a voluntary tithe given to someone who volunteered to serve the households of the people as a Levite. Every individual family decided to give to the minister of their choice but was only to give to him "according to his service".

Israel was actually a republican form of self government that was operating according to "perfect law of liberty" through a voluntary network of free assemblies supported by freewill offerings. It had no legislature, no king, and no standing army and, of course, no taxation.

Part of this neglect of one of the freest and most successful systems of self government in history is due to the false notions about what they were doing and not doing.

This is probably a good place to find out what was really going on back then. We present some questions and answers below that may be eye opening.

Nor do the modern agorists mention, or even understand, the early Church and the christian community it served which changed to course of the Roman Empire and allowed millions of people survive and thrive during its decline and fall. When the early Church was established by the appointment of Jesus Christ, it was forbidden to be like the government and rulers of the world's political states which "exercise authority one over the other." There were no lawmakers, taxes, nor coercion in the early Church but there was voluntarism identified as charity, hope in The Way, and common culture of faith that produced a "union and discipline" of that christian society through the communion of that defined Church.

Society and State are not the same thing. All States may include society or societies but not all societies form a State. The power of the State originates in the individuals that form it and it cannot have more powers than the individuals who created it had.

Minutemen were private colonists who independently organized to form well-prepared militia companies self-trained in weaponry, tactics and military strategies. They also aided in local law enforcement, built roads needed in the communities. The first public schools in Virginia were built by the voluntary militia and the teachers funded by the parents through tuition or contributions. The public schools as we know them today didn’t come into vogue until the 1930s? Pryor to that America was great.
The exercise of force to provide health, education and welfare has altered the hearts and minds of members of society through covetous practices and to reverse that process people must gather in small connected groups to support the same things for their neighbor and community through voluntarism and charitable works.

What is conducive to the growth and well being of the gregarious individual is conducive to the growth and well being of a free society. Whatever weakens that individual weakens society.

Red Agorist

In any group of agorists both ideology and intent will matter. Black markets that may become the seed of a “counter-economy” but simply rebelling or desiring to undermine the state authority or even just dishonoring the existence of preexisting dependence is a negative goal. A black market may be a way to survive but it is basically a capitalist market. While surviving is a legitimate goal in hard times, a more heroic morality of sacrifice for others will produce more viable results.

The early Christian community gives us many historical examples for a truly revolutionary struggle through peaceful means. Force begets force.

If agorism is to be composed of politically conscious individuals, that consciousness needs to have the noblest of goals with ideologies rooted in justice and mercy, honor and fellowship, service and not just survival.

In Thaddeus Russell’s book, A Renegade History of the United States, where the mafia provided an escape from government overreach might suggest that the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. Any reliance on immoral or amoral allies may leave the door open to corruption and future tyrants.

It is not enough to desire a non-aggressive position of "do no harm" since most harm is the result of vast numbers of people who are so apathetic or ego-centered that they never engage in the sacrifice to undo harm through love of others.

In the pamphlet Counter-Economics, Samuel Edward Konkin III compares black markets, white markets, and red markets.

All taxation is not unjust by its nature. But all socialism and communism engages in red markets because they inevitably rely on forced redistribution of the labor of the individual. Men have been establishing civil systems since Cain's first city-state. God allows men to establish governments of many types and forms by consent. Some of those systems may weaken and bind the people but also tempt their leaders to become despots. Nimrod's Babylon, Pharaoh's Egypt or Caesar's Rome... all have their own temptations.

Slavery begins in the mind through envy and jealousy, sloth and avarice and leads to force and betrayal. Freedom begins in the heart with love and forgiveness, charity and hope. To be free you must free others, care about their freedom, their rights, and their lives as much as you do your own.

There seems to be a forest of socialism, capitalism, syndicalism and libertarianism that populates the discussion with innumerable modifiers like anarcho-, agora-, alt-, etc.

Any attempt to establish an agorist society that depends upon dishonor, subterfuge, to limit the rights of others or even undermine the choices of others, including members of the State, reduces the moral integrity of the ideology with which happiness and freedom is pursued. The outcome will be modified accordingly.

The early Church and the early Christian society it served is one of the few historical examples of a truly agorist community that arrived at success for centuries.

We should not make the State, its members, or its officers our enemy. Freedom's ally is righteousness for all in love. That love cannot just be for those who love us and even for our enemies, whether real or perceived. Such love must be the foundation of your community and requires humility and forgiveness. You cannot produce a virtuous society of liberty without the cultivation of social Virtues. We are to be friends with the unrighteous mammon because we know it will fail and we need to prepare ourselves individually and in intentional communities for more righteous habitations.

False Agorism

Many agorists like Carson and Chartier, Konkin and Schulman must resort to coercion and usurpation of the individual's rights to establish their agorist utopian society.

If they do they are not true agorists.

They often imagine that all the rich must be thieves and all the actions of the organized State are criminal.

When anyone establishes a socialist or even capitalist society, they imagine that things that are taken are stolen. They blame their poverty on others and fail to realize that the rise of the Welfare State draws the power from the people by its nature and the participation of the people.

Things or even taxes are seldom stolen.

Generations of people sign up through application. They become members numbered by the socialist Collective or the corporate State. They use their number as a member, take the benefits often at other people's expense and then ignore any moral rules of the system they signed up for.

Neither the socialist Collective or the corporate State is very forgiving of the rule-breakers but it will often be too late when the subject citizens realize they waived their rights and became human resources when they first begin to disregard or failed to protect the right of their neighbor or desired benefits at the expense of others.

Social security systems of socialist Collective or the corporate State perpetually end up in debt. The Social Security system in America was in debt from the beginning because the government has been in debt since its beginning. No one has gotten a benefit in the United States except by stealing from their children and their neighbor's children's future.

Some Questions

• What was the bondage of Egypt, and why were we to never go back there again?
• Have people given consent to a social compact that might enslave them, like in the days of Egypt?
• Why would the slothful be under tribute?
• Why did the Corban of the Pharisees make the word of God to none effect?
• Why did Jesus say "Call no man Father upon the earth"?
• Why did Jesus say not to be like the rulers who called themselves Benefactors?
• Why did Peter say covetous practices would make us Merchandise and curse children?
• What did Jesus list off as the Weightier matters?
• Why did Jesus command that the people sit down in Tens?
• What is Religion and what is Pure Religion?
• What was Public religion and the imperial Cult of Rome? How did it differ from Pure Religion practiced by early Christians?
• Why did the Church have a Daily ministration?
• How do the Modern Christians differ from the early Church who followed The Way of Christ?
• What were the deeds of the Nicolaitans, and why did God hate those deeds?
• What was the Christian conflict with Rome?
• Are modern Christians actually workers of iniquity?
• Do people today make covenants with the gods of this world because they love the wages of unrighteousness?
• What is the difference between the Baptism of John the Baptist and the Baptism of Herod or Constantine or Rabbinical Baptism?
• Israel was not to have a golden calf but what did that mean?
• What were the altars of earth and stone?
• What are lively stones?
• Was the Sabbath a way or a day?

More Questions

• Were those rituals of ancient societies merely mindless acts of superstition, or were they metaphors?
• What are the rituals of the Church, and do they point to The Way of Christ and God?
• Could Welfare systems of the world be Snares and Traps?
• And what does this all have to do with Nimrod, Cain and Caesar who called themselves Benefactors but exercise authority one over the other?
• What was the Mark of Cain and the Mark of God and even the Mark of the Beast?
• Did Constantine start a different Church not of Christ?
• Why did the people have to sew Breeches for the Levites?
• What was early Israel like before the Voice of the people rejected God?
• Why were they organized by Tens?
• How was the Early Church funded, and what did they use the funds for?
• Did it operate by force or Freewill offerings?
• Do all governments of the world operate according to the ways of God?
• Or do they operate according to the ways of Cain and Nimrod?
• Who were the Nicolaitans, and what did they do that included the error of Balaam, and why does God hate their deeds?
• What was Christ trying to tell us about the Fathers of the earth and who are they?
• And who is The Beloved Anarchist?
• What do you want to do about all this?

To find the answers, we must seek and strive to do what Jesus said the way He said to do it... Including attending to the Weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith which include caring for the needs of our neighbors and the widows and orphans of our society through Pure Religion in matters of health, education, and welfare. We are NOT to provide for the needy of society through the Covetous Practices and the men who call themselves benefactors but who exercise authority one over the other like the socialists do.

The Way of Christ was like neither the way of the world of Rome nor the governments of the gentiles who depend on those fathers of the earth through force, fear and fealty who deliver the people back in bondage again like they were in Egypt. Christ's ministers and true Christians do not depend upon systems of social welfare that force the contributions of the people like the corban of the Pharisees which made the word of God to none effect. Many people have been deceived to go the way of Balaam and the Nicolaitan and out of The Way of Christ and have become workers of iniquity.

The Christian conflict with Rome in the first century Church appointed by Christ was because they would not apply to the fathers of the earth for their free bread but instead relied upon a voluntary network providing a daily ministration to the needy of society through Faith, Hope, and Charity by way of freewill offerings of the people, for the people, and by the people through the perfect law of liberty in Free Assemblies according to the ancient pattern of Tuns or Tens as He commanded.

The modern Christians are in need of repentance.

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