– Franz Oppenheimer, The State, 1908 (emphasis mine)

“The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner. On the negative side, it has been proved beyond peradventure that no primitive State could possibly have had any other origins. Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another. In this sense, every State known to history is a class State.”

– Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, 1935 (emphasis mine)

“In Western Europe, as in many other civilizations, the typical model of the origin of the State was not via a voluntary “social contract” but by the conquest of one tribe by another. The original liberty of the tribe or the peasantry thus falls victim to the conquerors. At first, the conquering tribe killed and looted the victims and rode on. But at some time the conquerors decided that it would be more profitable to settle down among the conquered peasantry and rule and loot them on a permanent and systematic basis. The periodic tribute exacted from the conquered subjects eventually came to be called “taxation.”"

– Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 1973

If we accept the thesis that the states arise and have arisen, not through the hocus-pocus of “social” “contracts”, but through conquest, and are perpetuated as systems of exploitation — especially, to use Nock’s terminology, “of one class by another” — does it not follow that we are at war?

Does it not follow that all people living under state domination and exploitation ought to rebel, right now?

Does it not follow that all of the state’s edicts, decrees, laws, proclamations and regulations which affront the sensibility of the individual, the tribe, the family, the neighborhood, ought rightly be ignored, denounced, ridiculed and overthrown?

Does it not follow that state agents are the enemy and deserving, perhaps qualifiedly in some cases, of the same response given to those who violate a peaceful person, a peaceful tribe, a peaceful family, a peaceful neighborhood?

And yet this does not happen. It does not happen despite the noble efforts of generations of philosophers, revolutionaries, scholars, activists and teachers.

The whole planet has been conquered. The whole planet has been being conquered, and held under conquest and exploitation for the benefit of the smallest, most despicable number, for a great many centuries.

They live. We sleep. And it is we who live the nightmares.

I submit for your consideration, as compassionate beings and as my captive audience and niche market, the idea that the Agorist slogan of “Agora! Anarchy! Action!” has it precisely backwards.

For billions, including YOU, right where you are standing now, action precedes agora, and cares precisely fuck-all about anarchy. It just does it. And it just does it quickly and efficiently, most of the time, almost by accident.

Just do it.

I strongly suggest that you consider the proposition that we might one day come to agree that the opportunity which exists in the broader libertarian context which is typically labeled among left-libertarians as a “problem” actually is a problem of emphasis, it is a problem of language, and it is a problem by which we fail to communicate with the stinky, filthy earth creatures WE NEED MOST to Arise!, take to the streets, go out of their tiny little cages and tiny little minds in the atomized industrial cities in order to enter the homes and lives and even bodies of their nearby conspecifics, and actualize an actual change in our actual circumstances such that our actual communication problems actually all disappear. Right now, or at least some time prior to next Tuesday. Action!

Such an event, such a permanent revolution, will not occur via mechanisms such as educating youngsters about the ideals of dead philosophers. It will not come about by virtue of those ideals being correct or consistent. It will not come about by means of setting an institutional agenda to make sure that we have the right message and are transmitting it via the right channels at the right times to the right recipients and with the right representatives. It will JUST HAPPEN.

Get out of the way!

As libertarians and Libertarians, it seems we have great faith in markets as a generally applicable rule. Meanwhile, we have almost no faith at all in people just doing it by themselves, in their own minds, in their own bodies, in their own families, in their own communities, in their own world, in their own universe and multiverses. And meanwhile, they are just doing it. They trade actively and passionately in close approximations of truly free markets already, even though the criminal, unjustifiably immoraly and inconsistent State continues to exist, in your mind and theirs. And they’ve never read or perhaps even heard about Mises, Popper, Rothbard, SEK3 and the rest of the suppressed pantheon.

I believe and feel and know that the fact is that at the Liberty Camp this week, I personally created more value for me than anyone else. And I did it by largely ignoring the fucking program and producing merry chaos along the way as an unnecessary, controllable side-effect that ought to be well-managed if such things are to go smoothly. I either inspired, independently conceived or incubated something like five new truly free-market businesses. I also successfully taught the Language of Liberty to one of my conspecifics who shall remain nameless in the interest of Agorist Opsec, inspired another and became almost instant friends with several more — none of whom were part of the Camp program! And this reality means that I am starting to live free RIGHT NOW while I must recall the necessity of being compassionate toward those around me who aren’t doing it terribly much, but merely sitting around talking about doing it instead.

And then I was sort-of purged from The Management, at one level, as a counter-revolutionary, though we did part ways with the consensus that we still love and support each other anyway. And the purge occurred around my own reaction to a response from a group of passionate, committed, fully consistent libertarians who reacted WRONGLY to me coming into the room and waiting my turn and asking a question of the general form: Is it okay for me to ask a question now?

The responses were things like: “What kind of question!” and “No!” and “That’s not on the agenda!” — even before they knew what the question was! (And by the way, no, I’m not going to tell you what the question was.)

And I found that my feelings were hurt, so I left the room and decided that I was going home. And nobody really expressed a great deal of concern, in my view, toward the idea that that fact itself had any particular value or importance for actualizing what we’re all trying to accomplish.

Discuss. With passion, compassion, and revolutionary fervor for the MASSIVE CHANGE IN BRAIN CHEMISTRY occurring right where you are sitting now. Or die. Meanwhile, I’m gonna go jerk off.

Yours, et cetera,

Sri Syadasti

PS: A3 is still groovy. Just swap the emphases around and we’re home.

Murray Rothbard’s classic essay from The Libertarian Forum in 1969, available as a scan of the newsletter at mises.org and worked up into a handout from invisiblemolotov.com.

Consistent libertarians support the revolutionary redistribution of property

No audio intro this time. 12 minutes, 13MB. Cat was on the rampage during recording.

Download:

Confiscation and the Homestead Principle.mp3

Not only are both of these gentlemen important to libertarian and modern anarchist thought, more — and perhaps most — importantly, they are both dead.

Join the Facebook group!

Coming soon: Corpses for Congress! Habeas Corpses!

– Samuel Edward Konkin III, “Reply to Rothbard“, Strategy of the New Libertarian Alliance, Number One, May Day 1981, 11-19