Remembering the 20th Anniversary of SEK3's Death
Remembering the 20th Anniversary of SEK3's Death
Today, February 23rd, 2024 marks the 20th year anniversary of the death of Samuel Edward Konkin III. He would have been 76 years old today.
Although Konkin famously wrote very little, and the intellectual rigor of his philosophy was, in my opinion, incomplete to say the least, a few things about Konkin's unique contributions to libertarian thought remain worth noting.
The first of these being that the state is not an economically neutral firm. By which he meant that all governments inherently require certain economic functions and parasitic behaviors in order to be sustainable. And as such, the supposed ideological convictions of politicians and political party platforms don’t restrict or limit the state’s ability to carry out policy (this should be noted most apparently by the failed promises of every major politician). When it comes to an optimal and efficient tax structure, foreign policy in Yemen, weapons deals with Saudi Arabia, corporate monopolization and DARPA weapons development, does public opinion play any role whatsoever? Does the state consult an ideological playbook or public opinion before it undertakes these decisions? Konkin argued it does not. At times, parasitic states of all varieties are required to let the blood flow yet again, or else the host dies with no opportunity for the state to feast again later.
When the state cuts taxes, it collects more revenue. When the state repeals economic regulations it spurs more economic activity, but activity which is funneled primarily to the largest state-connected monopoly firms. When the state privatizes property by selling that property to the highest bidder, it trims the fat of its organization while generating for itself more money in the process! Konkin recognized that while such government policies were not inconsistent with libertarian principle, all government policy (even eliminative) inevitably results with the state on top, even if the average citizen receives some short-term benefits.
Konkin's attempt to critique the viability of politics in this way is often misunderstood as an attempt to ridicule all those who dare to not perform his ideal strategy in the process of attempting to gain a free world. But this view, I believe is mistaken. Konkin almost always tried to form alliances and friendships within the libertarian movement, even to those who disagreed with his agorist philosophy. Following Rothbard's scathing critique of his first work, New Libertarian Manifesto, Konkin still remained a cordial friendship with Rothbard and even donated several shares of his New Libertarian magazine when he was purged from the CATO Institute. After all, Rothbard and Mises were Konkin's main philosophical inspirations and intellectual heroes. I believe his primary goal in elaborating these ideas in such a manner was to encourage libertarians to acknowledge the unfortunate fact that not all paths bear fruit in the pursuit of liberty. Some roads lead libertarians down a dead end, filled with wasted, time and energy. Many of those same (political) roads promote politicized ideas about how the state actually operates, and often fosters within libertarians an uncritical trust and even worship for political candidates as long as they espouse “libertarian” sounding rhetoric.
Although I believe Konkin's counter-economic proposals remain under developed and outdated in many respects, an important point of note is that the ability for people to freely establish black market institutions and economic networks outside the state's purview are eventually going to need to occur in order to have a free society. Were 100% of the market to turn black, after all, the state would no longer exist. In that respect, all libertarians seek the agora, or the open marketplace of a free society!
Konkin's other major contribution was his founding of the Movement of the Libertarian Left, which later became the Alliance of the Libertarian Left; a coalition of individuals broader than agorists and Austro-libertarians, including left-wing anarchists and others within the anti-statist left, (ancoms, anti-war New Leftists, mutualists, market anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, etc.) which Konkin created in order to continue Rothbard's failed project building an alliance with the anti-war New Left of the 1960s.
Konkin adopted the "left-libertarian" label for two key reasons: Firstly, a historical reason; in the late 18th century, the left-right spectrum originally emerged in France purely due to the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly, with the monarchists and hard-core statists sitting on the right, and the anti-monarchist classical liberals, anti-state socialists and libertarians sitting on the left. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first anarchist, who sat on the furthest left on the Assembly, was an ally of Frederic Bastiat, the minarchist classical liberal who sat directly next to him. Thus, as Konkin noted the original left-right spectrum was originally not based on culture, but based on how statist your ideology was. Leftists, before the embrace of Marxism, were actually more anti-statist leaning than right-wingers at that time.
This historical reason also ties into Konkin's second reason for adopting leftism: This being that the original anarchists (or libertarians) of the 19th century (Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tucker, Goldman and others) all considered themselves to be hard-core leftists opposed to capitalism, not in favor of it. Capitalism, to them (in its original use before Marx co-opted the term to refer to both a free market and state intervention), merely meant a system of state privileges granted to capitalists; or in other words the system of forced wage labor under monopoly firms, poor working conditions, artificial income inequality, etc. which existed during their time because of the state apparatus. Thus, Konkin considered it problematic to refer to the concepts of a free market and capitalism as interchangeable synonyms. He recognized that those who called themselves “ancaps” often found themselves stuck in between either defending free markets as they could exist, or current day capitalism, taking the side of corporations as “free market firms” and arguing against the poor downtrodden worker. Large centralized corporations to Konkin were not a "persecuted minority" like Ayn Rand suggested, but a very part of the state system itself, propped up through various legal means and government support. Other Austrian theorists such as Roderick Long and Per Bylund (following in Konkin’s footsteps) have done a phenomenal job to vindicate this crucial point. Thus, it made sense for Konkin in his view (despite being an Austrian and firm Rothbardian) to oppose capitalism, not defend it.
Another reason for Konkin’s “leftism” could be attributed to his embrace of many traditionally leftist causes which the 19th century anarchists also considered an essential aspect of their libertarianism. Opposition not just to the state, but other non-violent forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, authoritarian parenting techniques and many others. One could even argue that Konkin was the first Rothbardian to advocate what is now referred to as “thick libertarianism.”
Thanks to these insights, Konkin inspired a variety of libertarians to expand upon these ideas by either Austrians (as already mentioned Long and Bylund), or non-Austrians like Kevin Carson. The entire modern left market anarchist movement, including the publication of major libertarian organizations, such as C4SS and Agorist Nexus, likely would not exist had it not been for Konkin's foundation of the MLL in the late 1970s.
As a final note, Konkin was also known for coining some of the most now known neologisms still used today in the libertarian movement, most famously the term “minarchist” as well as the terms “partyarch,” along with of course, “counter-economics” and “agorism.”
For all of these reasons, and many others too numerous to list here, I champion Sam and want to say a big "thank you" to celebrate all he has done for the libertarian movement. Although he never lived to witness the death of the state, or even many of the wonderful technological developments which emerged in the last 20 years (which I believe he would've loved to see as he was a major science fiction fan!), Konkin's ideas will continue to remain relevant for decades to come, and probably even longer than that. So Sam, may the force be with you, may the rest of us live long and prosper, and may the state (and all aggressive organizations along with it) be smashed into a billion pieces, never to return again!
(For those who want to read more Konkin and agorist-related material, feel free to visit my website The Agora Library. For more of Konkin’s work directly, please visit the Collected Writings of SEK3 or Victor Koman’s Agorist Archives. I’ll also include a link to the Agorist Archives donation page where you can contribute any amount to help keep Sam’s work alive!)