Saturday, March 04, 2006

Sabotage!

A quotable quote from the late Samuel Edward Konkin III about monkeywrenching the State:

Ideologically, there is nothing wrong with sabotaging the State or even shooting statists; either you believe the State is pure institutional aggression or you need to go back to elementary classes in basic libertarian theory. However, for agorists there is a strong economic element involved: is this economically sound?

Morally, all but our pacifist allies should have no problem with self-defense and hence sabotage of the State. The interesting questions arrive in the Strategic and Tactical levels. Strategically, we refer to agorism: all counter-economic activity is considered sabotage of the State’s economic order. So, again, we have no problem in a systematic sabotage of the State. But how and where? When should scarce resources be utilized for a negative, defensive purpose rather than our usual pursuit of moral profit having the positive side-effect of smashing the State?

And so we come to the Tactical level, the elegance of Counter-Economics answers our question simply: almost never. There are two categories where sabotage may be engaged in, divided praxeologically, into production and consumption. Consumption means that a particular counter-economist finds sabotaging the State to be his or her whim-worshipping pleasure. Most of MLL, most of the time, cannot waste resources on such pleasures.

On the other hand, on a production level, one commits a destructive act in order to clear the way for an even more constructive act. What object of the State could distract us to put our “dynamite” in its vile dam blocking the road to freedom? The answer is War. Not only is sabotaging the war machine satisfying, but downright urgent. Lives are at stake, either draftees from home or victims of imperialism abroad.

(Tactics of the MLL, Vol. IV, No. 3, December 1987)

4 Comments:

At 11:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uh oh, dangerous talk...

-Dain

 
At 1:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's dangerous not to talk about it. Governments killed 203,000,000 of their own people in the 20th century alone.

 
At 2:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh yes, I was being sarcastic.
Man, I've always been disturbed by "their own people". Saddam killed thousands of "his own people", etc. As if he owns them.

-Dain

 
At 11:17 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The problem here is that, for all intents and purposes you are the property of the State. They inventory you, give you a tracking number, "allow" you to keep certain amounts of your money, disallow you from many activities without permission (to insure your safety and continued productivity) and so on. If that's not a definition of owned, then I don;t know what is. "We" are the property of the State, as far as they are concerned and they have the paperwork to prove it. They can, and do dispose of us as,when and how they will.
As Brad says, it's dangerous not to talk about it, altho the conversation may be too late.

 

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