Election Day 2008

"But Whom Will You Root For?"

Written shortly before Election Day 2004, this essay of mine applies equally well to my feelings during the election now upon us:

Our lunch conversation, as usual, had wandered finally to the upcoming presidential race.

“All right,” said my exasperated friend Ron, a conservative Republican. “I guess I’m resigned to the fact that you won’t vote at all in November. But you’re a politics junkie! Surely you’ll be rooting for someone!”

And it dawned on me that, yes, despite 32 years of persistent nonvoting, I’ve usually rooted for one of the major presidential candidates, always seeing one potential master as slightly less odious than the other. Likewise, for purely strategic reasons in the struggle for liberty, there’s typically been a reason to cast, if not a vote, then a hip-hip-hooray for one lying nitwit over another.

You can continue reading this essay right here.

"Death to the Party!"

For those libertarians still clinging to the electoral process, I present here “Death to the Party!”, a polemic written by Victor Koman and published in pamphlet form by “Ultra Faction MLL [Movement of the Libertarian Left]” in the 1980s. I don’t know whether Victor subscribes to these opinions today, but I find this little essay still on target.

Those of you who still love Liberty and Freedom, listen! Those of you not poisoned by the dope of Power, hear me! Those of you not yet shipwrecked by the Sirens of statism, read this! That most evil of temptors, the State itself, is seducing you in the dark alley which is the Party. Do not be deceived and led into dishonor.

The Party is the State. How can anything be more plain or more obvious? The rotting corpse of government has burst forth, spewing out a new breed of maggots to infect us and spread the disease of slavery, plunder and murder. For a Party exists only to put people into power. Don’t be hoodwinked by lies about “education.” Einstein needed no Party to get his ideas to the world. Nor did Spooner, nor Rand, nor Paine, nor any man or woman with the truth. Truth needs no Party.

The idea of Libertarianism is Liberty. The idea of the Party is Government. The only “education” requiring a Party is “education” in Statism. Ask a Cambodian, if you can find one.

And what will you learn from such an education? The philosophy of Atilla. The metaphysics of Stalin. The biology of Leviathan.

He who serves the Party serves the State. She who supports the Party supports the Statist quo. They who defend the Party defend those who would hunt us down and kill us.

By groveling before the altar of the almighty Vote, you are not turning the sword of the State against itself — you are sharpening its blade! By drawing others into political Sodomy, you are not disarming the guns of the State — you are providing them with fresh bullets! And by wasting your time learning to plot and betray, compromise and backstab, you are not bleeding the State — the State is bleeding you!

Those of you who claim to defend Liberty, tell me this: if the system you oppose is corrupt and evil, how can you change it by joining it, by saying “This is a place I belong, a system I endorse,” by embracing it? Do you not become as evil and corrupt?

Can you change the Mafia by becoming a Don or even the Capo? Can you stop the NKVD by becoming its head axeman? Can you reform the Gestapo by becoming an agent willing to “work within the system”? Can you stop destruction by becoming the destroyer?

I SAY NO! I say that to help the Party is to lock chains around the necks of Libertarians everywhere and lead us to death. I say that the Party is as foul and corrupt as the State to which it toadies. I say that the smallest quantum of aid or solace to the Party is open, blatant support of everything Libertarians find hideous and repugnant.

The Party is Death.

The Party must die.

Long live Freedom!

"That's how democracy works"

“I’m really starting to hate those protesters. I’m tired of their shit. They need to take it up at the ballot box if they don’t like it.”

“You’ve already beaten them at the ballot box, remember? They won a referendum, and before they could get it implemented you got another referendum on the ballot and overturned them. That’s why they’re holding signs and throwing water balloons.”

“Well, that’s how democracy works.”

The Army of the Republic
by Stuart Archer Cohen
(St. Martin’s Press, 2008)

"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.

Note to Leo: shut the f**k up

Actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Forest Whitaker, and Dustin Hoffman have joined Google to get out the vote via an obnoxious YouTube video, which I refuse to link to. (If you must, go find it yourself. I won't make it easy for you.) Says DiCaprio in the video, "If you're not going to vote, I don't even know what to say to you anymore."

Well I know what to say to you, Leo. Shut your mouth, leave us alone, and don't poke your pointy little head above ground again unless it's to make a movie.

Buy a piece of Left Libertarian history

OK, the first 2008 presidential debate is behind us, and Election Day is just a few weeks away. So it’s time to officially launch CounterCampaign ’08. And what better way to do so than to get your mitts on one of these few remaining original “Vote for Nobody” buttons? Longtime comrade Vic Koman has just a few buttons remaining from the original CounterCampiagn ’76 stock, manufactured when Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were trading punches for the throne. Vic says these buttons are “in very fine condition, though some have lost a portion of the sheen on their metal backings.” Heck, they’re only $3.20 apiece. I’ve proudly worn my “Vote for Nobody” button every election season for more than 25 years. And you can buy a piece of this wearable and oh-so-relevant Libertarian Leftist history for yourself right here.

The immorality of voting

My comrade Wendy McElroy has served as one of my philosophical plumblines for quite a long time, and as an advocate of the art of nonvoting, she’s without equal. So fer crissakes, download her 45-minute lecture “The Immorality of Voting,” presented last month at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Then make a PayPal donation; the lecture is kind of a fundraiser for Wendy’s websites, which I think are indispensable.

Free yourself from election madness

Leftist historian Howard Zinn is no antipolitics anarchist, but his heart is often in the right place. Here, he effectively throws the wet blanket of reality over Election 2008:

"Is it possible to get together with friends these days and avoid the subject of the Presidential elections? The very people who should know better, having criticized the hold of the media on the national mind, find themselves transfixed by the press, glued to the television set, as the candidates preen and smile and bring forth a shower of cliches with a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.

"Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is an exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the major candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor candidates, though everyone knows our marvelous democratic political system won't allow them in. ...

"I'm talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes -- the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

"But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice. ...

"So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the entire society, including the left. Yes, two minutes. Before that, and after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Read the whole thing here. And thanks to Kevin Carson for leading me to it in the first place.

Things to do instead of voting: #2

Commune with nature.

Things to do instead of voting: #1

Build a cardboard spaceship.

Election 2008: returns are in!

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Don't sanction "the process"

There are so many quotable quotes in my friend Wendy McElroy’s latest blog post this morning (“Act Responsibly: Don’t Vote!!”) that I’m tempted to reprint the whole thing here. But I won’t. Go read it for yourself. In the meantime, chew on these choice bits:

“This November, most people won’t ‘do it’ in the voting booth despite attempts to shame them. They will spend the time on activities that enrich their lives: buying groceries, playing with children, catching up on work.”

“Sometimes political disgust converts non-voting from an act of indifference to one of protest through which people express a word that all politicians fear: ‘no.’ Not just ‘no’ to them but to the entire process.”

“Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician’s ear: ‘You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.’”

Dilbert on nonvoting

On making big or small decisions

From The Case Against a Libertarian Political Party, by Erwin S. Strauss (1980):

“To understand the extent to which people are beginning to appreciate that participation in politics confers no significant control over events, consider the following joke. A man is asked by his neighbor who makes the decisions in his household. He replies, ‘I make the big decisions; my wife makes the small decisions.’ When asked for examples of small decisions, the man says, ‘Where to live, whether to get a new car, where to send the kids to college — things like that.’ If those are the ‘small’ decisions, then what are the big decisions? ‘Who should be President, whether to increase the defense budget, whether to reduce welfare payments — things like that.’ The fact that most people get the point of this joke (regardless of how funny they think it is) indicates that they are aware that their decisions on the ‘big’ things don’t really count for very much, while their decisions on the ‘small’ things are conclusive.”

Once again, the case against electoral politics

Sheesh! Every time I make nonvoting, antipolitics statements like those I’ve made here recently about campaigning for Ron Paul, I get hit with scoldings for under-appreciating the "fine work" of libertarian candidates and their electoral efforts — comments like the ones you’ll find attached here.

So I feel compelled again to offer the same response I have so often before: some of my best friends are voters, but I’m a longtime nonvoter who believes “anarchists” and “radical libertarians” who rely on electoral politics to “liberate” themselves are both unimaginative and philosophically inconsistent. If it’s humiliating to be ruled, how much more humiliating is it to choose your own masters? I’ve talked about this many times before, including here, here, here, and in a recent interview with Sunni Maravillosa.

My libertarian critics should also check out a couple of nonvoting “classics”:

Abstain From Beans, by Robert LeFevre

Party Dialogue, by George H. Smith