"Our Enemy, The Party" Redux

SEK3's "Our Enemy, The Party" has now been turned into a nice, new, trifold brochure. Download it here. Thanks, Keith!

"Our Enemy, The Party"

Old friend and longtime comrade Jack Shimek writes, “I'm looking for an MLL pamphlet called: ‘Our Enemy, the Party’ — didn't you do an update of that pamphlet? I can't seem to find it anywhere.”

Well, I did update a few of the late Samuel Edward Konkin III’s old Movement of the Libertarian Left pamphlets a few years back; you can find links to them along the right side of this blog and at Agorism.info. But alas, Sam’s classic handout “Our Enemy, The Party” wasn’t among them. What’s worse, a quick online search indicates that the text is nowhere to be found on the Internet. Since Election Day approaches rapidly, and there are still plenty of unimaginative “libertarians” out there who consider the vote sacred, I offer here the full text of MLL Issue Pamphlet #5, “Our Enemy, The Party,” written by SEK3 and published in 1980 (later reissued by Sam in 1987):

Introduction

In 1935, proto-libertarian Albert J. Nock wrote his seminal analysis of the nature of government and society: Our Enemy, The State. During the Dark Ages of Libertarianism (between the Fall of Benjamin Tucker [1908] to the rise of Murray Rothbard [1965-70] the leading libertarian thinkers have warned freedom-seekers against participation in the political process, that is, against vote-chasing and power-seeking. Nock, his disciple Frank Chodorov, H.L. Mencken, Isabel Patterson, Rose Wilder Lane, Leonard Read, and Robert LeFevre all sought to enlighten, instruct, and possibly sound the alarm. Chodorov and LeFevre were both instrumental in organizing activist libertarians — Chodorov’s Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI) in the 1950s and LeFevre’s Libertarian Alliance in the 1960s. All warned against supporting any politician under any circumstances.

Now, in 1980, the blight of politician libertarianism, that absurd oxymoron based on abolishing rule by the State but accepting rule by a political party — partyarchy — has crested. Our current leading thinker and essayist admits all partyarch activity to date is deceit and failure. But still the concept lives on. This self-destructive “heresy” will probably linger on until the State is finally abolished from Man’s mind, but it can be reduced to an insignificant minority of no influence in the immediate future by vigorous activism and refutation. To this end, to save us another twenty years in the Dark Ages for Liberty, this pamphlet is written.

Our Enemy, The State

For those still pursuing the hopeless utopia of “limited” government (minarchy), there is little of substance to be said. In a nutshell, the State is the monopolization of coercion — initiatory violence. Any defensive acts are incidental to its essence. To a libertarian, such coercion is the only social immorality. (Personal immorality is the individual’s problem.) Hence the State is the institutional monopolization of immorality, evil, altruism, irrationality, and/or whatever you call it in your belief system.

Having got this far, one must ask if one is cursed with obeying this monster until it agrees to limit and abolish itself, remaining in complicity with its plunder and murder (taxation and war), or if one should break with it immediately (taking care of obvious threats to one’s life) and thenceforward living statelessly. The gradualist, conservative, “philosophical anarchist” makes the first choice; the rest select the moral course. But yet another choice faces the would-be consistent libertarian: having chosen abolitionism over gradualism, one must choose the mechanism by which one obtains the free society. Is it to be the political means or the economic means — Power or Market?

The Case For Consistency

Can means inconsistent with an end ever achieve that end? Can violence obtain peace, can slavery obtain freedom, can plunder protect against theft? The statist who pursues war, conscription and taxation answers yes. The libertarian responds no. Then why will an abolitionist anarchist pursue political means to abolish the political process? The end of the libertarian is a voluntary society where the market has replaced the government, where economics functions without politics. The purpose of politics is the maintenance, extension and controlling of the State — power. The market lies not on the road to power but on the road away.

Consistency to a libertarian means not some floating abstraction of non-contradicting philosophy but a consistency of theory with reality, of ideology and practice, of what ought to be and what is done. Complying with laws and procedure is necessary for the political route; one’s psychology becomes attuned to parliamentarianism, procedure and compromise, coalitions and betrayals, glad-handing and back-stabbing, elation at the ephemeral approval of others rather than one’s own achievements. Thus is one conditioned for living successfully in the State.

Pursuing the market anarchy directly through counter-economics, one’s psychology becomes attuned to supply-demand calculations, risk-taking, commerce with those of similar self-interest — hence inherently trustworthy, to salesmanship, and to elation at personal achievement (profit) and the self-correcting negative feelings accompanying loss. Thus is one self-programmed for living successfully — in a marketplace.

The consistent, or counter-economic, libertarian — agorist — suffers none of the frustrations arising from the self-contradictions of the political libertarian — partyarch. The State loses by each free transaction committed in defiance or evasion of its laws, regulations and taxes; the State gains by every compliance with, acceptance of, and payment to its institutions. Thus does agorism create anarchy and partyarchy preserve the State.

Our Enemy, The Party

Any “Libertarian” Party is immoral, inconsistent, unhistorical (see revisionist accounts of similar parties in the past: the Philosophic Radicals, the Liberty Party, the Free Soilers, and many others), psychologically frustrating and thoroughly counter-productive. Worst of all, such an LP may be the savior of the State.

Assume, as is the case in 1980, that a majority of vote-eligible citizens (in the U.S. as it happens) are poised not to vote. And as the counter-economy grows and the State’s sanction recedes, the tax-starved monster teeters on desertion of its unpaid enforcers and thus final collapse. The Higher Circle of the State stand to lose their power, privilege and centuries of ill-gotten gain. When suddenly the “L”P springs to the rescue.

Those who would send the taxman away now pay to keep their voting privilege and their record clean to run for office. Those who would violate laws and evade regulations now maintain the system to do away with it at a later, more expedient time. And those who would dodge or defend against the State’s enforcers “accept the result of a democratic election.”

Consider the fate of a heroic agorist who, at an earlier time of trust of “fellow libertarians” incautiously had spoken of her activities to be used as example to others, is turned in for her black marketeering by a libertarian who feels “the time is not right for revolution.”

She is arrested by Libertarians working their way through the system to reform it — as police. She is locked up…by a Libertarian working his way through the system to reform it — as a turnkey. She is tried…by a Libertarian working his way through the system — as a judge. And she is executed…by a Libertarian working his way through the system to reform it — as an executioner. So ends up partyarchy at its logical conclusion.

The Rôle of Activism

The agorist — consistent libertarian — has many alternatives to wasting time helping preserve the State and its system through politics. Undoubtedly there are rewards for some (though not all) for the political path where the Power Elite shower rewards on those who most successfully co-opt opposition and harness revolutionary fervor to maintain at least some of the State and its privilege. But the agorist can be amply rewarded in the counter-economy in both the material and personal sense for entrepreneurial activities. And there is a vital rôle for agorist activists — for that much-acclaimed cadre.

There are tens of millions of counter-economists in North America, and even more in the world at large. Few understand or have even heard of a philosophy of living that is consistent, moral and would free these true marketeers of residual guilt laid on them by the court intellectuals. Enlighten and interconnect these millions and one will have a fully conscious, efficacious and expanding society imbedded within the malfunctioning statist one, collapsing from wars, terrorism, runaway inflation, and stultifying bureaucracy. And soon it shall be the society.

That is the goal of the revolutionary agorist cadre of counter-economic practitioners and libertarian theorists. And the Movement of the Libertarian Left is working to build that alliance. Join us. Or seek the free society in your own, consistent way.

But give no aid to Our Enemy, The Party.

Tired ideas for would-be radicals

Naomi Wolf’s Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries follows up last year’s The End of America, her belated warning of a “fascist shift” in the U.S. For radical libertarians, The End of America was pretty pedestrian, revelatory only to readers who never graze much beyond the bestseller list.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist grabbing Wolf’s new political handbook, since I’m always on the lookout for a modern how-to to rival Saul Alinsky’s 1971 classic Rules for Radicals. But unlike the late Alinsky, Wolf is neither an out-of-the-box thinker nor particularly radical. So Give Me Liberty is a mixed and largely uninspired bag of left-centrist polemic against the usual suspects (Bush, Cheney, et al.), battle cry rhetoric, and sketchy advice on writing press releases, arranging town hall meetings, launching blogs, petitioning our masters and, of course, getting out the vote (especially after we dump that pesky ol’ Electoral College). Early on in the book, Wolf writes that she was recently startled to discover that the Declaration of Independence is a radical document that exhorts the right to revolution. Egad! Too bad her definition of revolution is limited to working the system and playing electoral politics. “There are concrete laws we must pass to restore liberty,” Wolf writes. When she discusses the Bill of Rights, her only comment on the Second Amendment is that it “protects the right to own guns, at least in certain circumstances.” Now that’s revolutionary thinking. Not.

In the book’s “user’s guide,” Wolf is joined by other activists — what she calls her “citizens’ council” — including Trevor “Oyate” and Raymond D. Powell from Ron Paul’s camp, neither of whom have much to say. In her introduction to this section, Wolf explains, “We compiled a wish list at the end for laws, entities, and practices that we need to brainstorm about, create, enact, or build.” All of the items on that wish list, not surprisingly, are about making political elections fairer, more inclusive, and even making election fraud a “major felony.” One of Wolf’s cohorts, broadcaster-activist Curtis Ellis, suggests “making voting mandatory, with fines for not voting. When you renew your auto registration or file your taxes, you should have to show that you voted in elections.” Thanks, Curtis. You’ve just offered us one more good reason to avoid vehicle registration and evade taxes.

Give Me Liberty is of little use to Libertarian Leftists. There’s still a valuable activists’ how-to that needs to be written. Maybe one of these days, I’ll write the damn thing myself.

Organizing the disorganized

Sometimes, “preaching to the choir,” as so many of us lefties do on these blogs, isn’t a bad thing. As historian-activist Howard Zinn said in a 2004 interview:

“There is value in people speaking to people who already agree with them but who don’t act on the principles that they believe in. And one of the reasons you have rallies and demonstrations — and you know that the people who are going to come to those rallies and demonstrations are people that already agree with the thrust of those demonstrations — is the idea of bringing the choir together to encourage people, inspire people, activate, motivate people. So it’s not a terrible thing to preach to the choir.”

But whether we’re preaching to the choir or focusing on outreach, recruitment, or direct action, we Libertarian Leftists definitely need to pull our shit together. And the Alliance of the Libertarian Left’s ad hoc global organizing committee offers the info and resources you need to galvanize radicals in your area to action. “Are you looking for other like-minded people in your neck of the woods to start an ALL local? Do you already have a core group to start a local, but need help getting things off the ground? Need web space for your new group? Want advice on organizing or actions that you can take in your community? Just ask…”

And by the way, this committee has one of the niftiest logos I’ve ever seen.

Electoral politics is just poor strategy

A week ago, good comrade Brad Spangler posted that “the Libertarian Party specifically and electoral politics generally are very poor tools for the advancement of libertarian ideas if we’re talking about radical (i.e. real) libertarianism.” His evidence: Liberty magazine’s recent poll results, which show that, among its readership over the past two decades, “the trendline is clearly away from anarchist sentiments.” This is due in no small part, Brad says, to the fact that “within the libertarian movement, anarchists are not making their case because they’re busy ‘doing politics’ and minarchists enjoy the pro-government bias inherent in existing government being the status quo.”

Radical libertarians (aka anarchists), Brad explains, “haven’t been adequately making their case because the attempt to use a political party as a vehicle for the communication of ideology results in our best and brightest people being tied up in endless platform wars with establishmentarian elements and vainly struggling to defend radicalism from smears by our worst enemies — those who want to define libertarianism out of existence by making the word come to mean something else entirely.”

As usual, I agree with Brad totally. Alas, the first respondent to Brad’s post does not. He writes:

“I’m a candidate, but my top priority is to talk about anarchism, not to build the Libertarian Party. I find it easier to get into discussions with people about politics when I’m a ‘candidate’ than just an ordinary Joe Six-pack.”

Ignoring altogether the condescending elitism inherent in the use of the term “Joe Six-pack,” this comment indicates its author either lacks imagination or is just plain lazy. C’mon! Since when is it hard to get into political discussions with people? In just the past weekend, I’ve had (and have even seized upon) the opportunity to briefly comment on the economy and the political landscape to people trapped next to me at the gas pump, in line at the local coffee house, and sitting queued up outside a movie theater. Waiting with a whole lot of people to buy “forever stamps” at the post office, I got a nod and smile from a fellow patron when I remarked that were the USPS privately owned, there’d likely be more than two service windows open (eight were shuttered).

Pardon me for sounding cranky, but I think that with a larger set of balls, Brad’s correspondent could reach as many people in the trenches with his message, and reach them more effectively, if he posed as “an ordinary Joe Six-pack” and quit playing political candidate.

Take these pamphlets to the streets!

Comrade William Gillis has begun issuing a terrific new market anarchist pamphlet series. There are five available so far at agorism.info in easy-to-print downloadable PDF format. Each sports a provocative title and showcases a historical article that illustrates market anarchy’s relation to the revolutionary Left. These are great tools to add to your activist arsenal. Check them out here!

Saul Alinsky's class struggle analysis

[Continuing my reflections on Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals]

Saul Alinsky’s approach to class conflict analysis was simple, which is not a bad thing at all. He wrote:

“On top are the Haves with power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve. Numerically the Haves have always been the fewest. The Haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change. Thermopolitically they are cold and determined to freeze the status quo.

“On the bottom are the world’s Have-Nots. On the world scene they are by far the greatest in numbers. They are chained together by the common misery of poverty, rotten housing, disease, ignorance, political impotence, and despair; when they are employed their jobs pay the least and they are deprived in all areas basic to human growth. Caged by color, physical or political, they are barred from an opportunity to represent themselves in the politics of life. The Haves want to keep; the Have-Nots want to get. Thermopolitically they are a mass of cold ashes of resignation and fatalism, but inside there are glowing embers of hope which can be fanned by the building of means of obtaining power. Once the fever begins the flame will follow. They have nowhere to go but up. …

“Between the Haves and Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores — the middle class. Torn between upholding the status quo to protect the little they have, yet wanting change so they can get more, they become split personalities. … They insist on a minimum of three aces before playing a hand in the poker game of revolution. Thermopolitically they are tepid and rooted in inertia. Today in Western society and particularly in the United States they comprise the majority of our population.”

I appreciate the simplicity of Alinsky’s class theory. It paints a valid picture of the struggle. But it fails to acknowledge the role of the State, and for that reason, it’s incomplete. The agorist (radical Rothbardian, radical market) approach to class theory recognizes Alinsky’s Haves, Have-Nots, and Have-a-Little, Want Mores, but adds the overarching shadow of the oppressive, managerial State to pull the class war into tighter focus.

Even more simply than Alinsky, agorist class theory draws a sharp line between just two principal classes: a parasitic ruling class (which gains by the existence of the State) and a productive class (which loses by the existence of the State). But unlike Alinsky, it also concedes that people are complex and often confused, so it applies a graduated spectrum to measure a person’s (or group’s) actions as predominantly statist or agorist. While Alinsky divided the world into near-Randian bad guys (Haves), good guys (Have-Nots), and wishy-washy masses (Have-a-Little, Want Mores), agorists allow for greater shades of difference in the class struggle without compromising principles.

I’ll continue to evaluate Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as a guide for libertarian revolution in the coming weeks. In the meantime, for further expansion on agorist class theory, go here.

Saul Alinsky's "ideology of change"

[Continuing my reflections on Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals]

When the late Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals in 1971, most existing handbooks for revolution were largely bogged down in communist rhetoric. And Alinsky admirably committed his book to “splitting this political atom, separating this exclusive identification of communism with revolution.” But in doing so, I think he made a mistake in dismissing ideology altogether.

“An organizer working for and in an open society is in an ideological dilemma,” Alinsky wrote. “[H]e does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.” Alinsky’s “free-society organizer” is “loose, resilient, fluid, and on the move in a society which is itself in a state of constant change.” Anticipating the likely charge that such an activist is “rudderless,” Alinsky explained that the effective revolutionary has only one conviction — “a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions.” But without guiding principles or goals of any sort, how do you know when “right decisions” have been made? Alinsky doesn’t really address this.

Likewise, by embracing a wishy-washy, directionless “ideology of change,” Alinsky had no use for political consistency. After all, how can you be consistent when your only “good” is change for the sake of change? “In the politics of human life,” Alinsky wrote, “consistency is not a virtue. To be consistent means, according to the Oxford Universal Dictionary, ‘standing still or not moving.’ Men must change with the times or die.” In other words, keep moving, keep changing, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll eventually fall into something that works. But in Alinsky’s world, even if you finally create a workable, free society, you’ve got to keep moving and changing anyway. If you don’t, like a shark, you’ll die.

I think Saul Alinsky’s “ideology of change” is nonsense. In fact, I’m not sure he really believed it. More likely, he leaned on it to make Rules for Radicals acceptable to the broadest range of activists. But even with the book’s philosophical problems, there’s still much of value in it. I’ll have further thoughts to share in the next week.

Rules for Radicals

“Libertarianism is clearly the most, perhaps the only truly radical movement in America,” wrote the great Karl Hess almost 40 years ago [The Libertarian Forum, June 16, 1969]. “It grasps the problems of society by the roots. It is not reformist in any sense. It is revolutionary in every sense.”

Unfortunately, outside of Samuel Edward Konkin III’s New Libertarian Manifesto (1980), very little appropriate literature on revolutionary strategy is available to radical Left Libertarians who’ve grown beyond the basic “why to” to the inevitable “how to” stage. Most guides to revolution focus on seizing power, not diminishing it. And most are written from an explicitly communist point of view. Even left-collectivist organizer Saul Alinsky recognized this in 1971:

“The Have-Nots of the world, swept up in their present upheavals and desperately seeking revolutionary writings, can find such literature only from the communists, both red and yellow. Here they can read about tactics, maneuvers, strategy and principles of action in the making of revolutions. Since in this literature all ideas are imbedded in the language of communism, revolution appears synonymous with communism. … We have permitted a suicidal situation to unfold wherein revolution and communism have become one.”

To set right the situation, Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, “a revolutionary handbook not cast in a communist or capitalist mold, but as a manual for the Have-Nots of the world regardless of the color of their skins or their politics.” There is no doubt when reading Alinsky that he was willing to lean on government when he believed it necessary. He was by no means an anarchist. But Rules for Radicals remains, after 36 years, the closest thing we have to what might be called a “generic” tract on revolutionary “how to.” And for that reason, I intend to reflect here on some of its contents over the next few days.