I’m often asked something along the lines of the following: “If you’re not voting to buck the system, what exactly can you do to change the system in an equal or more effective way.”
Nothing.
Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg. The site of Pickett's Charge; one of history's greatest examples of choosing the wrong ground on which to fight.
This is the hardest thing to get people to understand when I bring up non-voting. Especially to politically active people, because “politically active” is usually defined as trying to change the system in some way or another.
I’m not interested in changing the system.
It is futile. The country has the system wanted by the majority of voters, and I don’t have the skills to change that many people’s minds. Few people do, and an individualist, market and freedom-oriented mindset is incompatible with that ability. The system operates collectively, only collective action within it can be effective, but a message of individual freedom cannot be effectively forwarded by collective means.
The country has the system the majority of voters want, and I don’t want to try to force them to change what they want. Even so, this system can’t work for much longer anyway, the best way to convince people to stop wanting it would be to stop trying to make it work.
Working within the system in any form strengthens it. I don’t want to strengthen it. To the extent that I want anything at all to happen to the system, I want it to starve. But mostly, I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: the system has no right to exist in the form it is in today. Those voters have no right to the system they’re voting for. The burden of “love it or leave it” is on them, not me, and it applies to the entire planet, not just the USofA. If they don’t like my way of individual freedom, free markets, and personal responsibility, they can leave, because I’m going to do all I can to take it back.
Technology, communications, and mobility, coupled with the core values that are still held by the majority of Americans and the unintended consequences of the system’s own contradictory premises make avoiding, evading, and bypassing the system easier than it has ever been. Those same things continually erode the system’s ability to compel submission, tribute, and collectivization, even as it appears to strengthen the hand of oppression. That disparity is likely to continue growing in our favor.
My goal is to use those to build a life outside the system, markets outside the system, interacting with it less and less as I build the means to do so. As a secondary goal, I hope to convince others to do the same and abandon their abusive guardians. The better the technology gets, the easier that is, and the harder it is for the system to stop it. The more people doing it, the larger the free market grows and the more resources it accumulates. The more resources it accumulates, the easier it is to convince others to join, and the harder it is for the system to hold them. Eventually, the system fades into irrelevance. Whether it also fades from existence or not matters less and less.
It’s a long, long process, to starve the state and let it wither on the vine. It will take generations if it happens at all, but it’s no more of an inter-generational long shot than doing the political approach is to even the most (realistically) optimistic of activists. Fortunately, that is not the criteria for success, merely a bonus.
There are, however, a few key advantages this agorist approach has that point hopefully to a systematic weakening of the system, purely as a side-effect of pursuing the primary goal of severing the relationship on our terms.
The political method requires complete success to realize any meaningful freedom; the agorist approach sees incremental increases in freedom with each incremental success.
The political approach puts success and principles at odds, requiring one to be compromised to the other; the agorist approach aligns principles and success. Success is defined as the extent to which principles are lived by.
The political approach strengthens the system by feeding it with activism, money, and moral sanction; the agorist approach removes activist energy, money, productivity, and moral sanction with each new advance.
The political approach requires the best and brightest, the most committed, to sacrifice to the system; the agorist approach withdraws the best and brightest from the system, accelerating its decline.
The political approach leaves no alternative in the event the whole thing collapses before political success can be achieved; the agorist approach is all about creating an alternative, whether the system collapses or not.
Simply abstaining from the ballot box is not enough, nor is it a firm requirement. The agorist approach does not preclude political activism, it merely puts the focus outside the system. There can still be benefit from strategically, or tactically, trying to intervene in the system against carefully selected targets. So long as it is approached as intervention not participation, ways of doing so effectively and without contributing to the system can be imagined. Several such plans have been forwarded that, while not explicitly so designed, can easily be fit into an interventionist framework as opposed to a participatory one. The two prominent Free State movements are both examples.
Nor is convincing others not to vote a requirement. The agorist approach does not require that it be exclusive, only that it be present as a viable alternative. It assumes the system as it is, complete with hundreds of millions of willing and active participants. Getting a few of them to stop will not in and of itself have significant effects. Offering them an alternative that will improve their own lives will have significant effects on them, and that is what matters.
The political divide among freedom activists is between those who want to save the system, and those who are willing to let the system fall. “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it …”
Well meaning people can have honest disagreements on which of those two alternatives is the best to pursue. However, from the moment of Hamilton’s Whiskey Tax and Washington’s quashing of the righteous rebellion it spawned, there has been no chance of altering it. Those Founders made it crystal clear that taxation with representation was not to be challenged, and that our representatives would do as they pleased, whether we individually chose them or not, whether they acted on our behalf or not.
Like it or not, the choice is between trying to save the system (and ultimately failing), or trying to save ourselves. I choose the latter, and it requires that the system be, if not outright abolished, at least banished from our lives.
Kyle is 44 year old computer programmer and wannabe writer currently living in Tucson, AZ. He has been a libertarian for nearly half of his years, though the political expression of that has evolved from Newt Gingrich Republican to the Libertarian Party to market anarchy to 
Nice piece, Kyle, and great to see you blogging here!
One quibble, though:
It will take generations if it happens at all
I call optimism fail on you. PGP. TOR. TruBanc. Assassination Politics.
Hi Kyle
This is a very eloquent article which I completely disagree with.
Please ask yourself this question: rather than the ancap/minarchist structuralist descriptions, is not the main divide in the liberty movement between those that are striving for freedom, and those that are fighting fascism? FIGHTING it, because they recognise that freedom cannot be achieved without dealing with fascism, and how it is perpetuated?
Chris is we fight it we will never win. Think about that long and hard minarchist.
Fascism is aggression. Aggression is always impractical and always collapses under the weight of its own contradictions … if you would just stop propping it up!
This is so good Kyle, I’m speechless. I think I’m going to *print it out*!
Great post.
This is the kind of Konkinist defeatism and lack of research into strategy that has made the Libertarian Party (that part of the libertarian movement that has been directly trying to wrest power from the state) almost completely ineffective for the prior 30 years. I admit that the LP is heavily infiltrated, but the reason for that is that is wasn’t trying hard not to be infiltrated, or to make infiltration irrelevant. The C4L has done a better job of that.
If you know nothing about electoral politics or strategy, then why write as if you know?
If you haven’t thought it through, and done the thing that is most likely to work (such as concentrate your vote and work with other pro-freedom activists in Wyoming), then why write as though you had?
This is Konkinist defeatism, writ large.
“Few people do, and an individualist, market and freedom-oriented mindset is incompatible with that ability.” Ahh. Pure bullshit. Just because that’s the tendency (for obvious reasons) does not mean that it is the way things work 100% of the time. True, there is little payoff in working towards liberty, especially with so many Konkinists and infiltrators in the LP. But it is both possible and worthwhile reducing the votes gained by statists, and both possible and worthwhile increasing the votes won by voluntaryists. (And yes, I am directly contradicting the logically inconsistent notion that someone cannot be both a voluntaryist and an elected official here. For instance: If I am elected to office, and refuse to enact any law not both passed unanimously, and protective of individual rights, I am a voluntaryist elected official. Doubly effective, if I use the position as a “bully pulpit” to spread the message of individual freedom.)
Is there a systemic pressure that favors statist collectivism among the unintelligent and uneducated voters? Sure. Do the unintelligent and uneducated typically decide elections based on bad decision making? Sure. Is that necessarily so? No. It is so for a small period of time, in one country, with a limited number of ACTUAL pro-freedom activists.
At least later in the article you contradict your earlier statements’ defeatist Konkinism, and state that intelligent opposition to the state is not mutually exclusive with intelligently-organized electoral politics.
It has been my experience that there is always something more effective that libertarian activists could be doing with their time. It has also been my experience that libertarians typically spend their time typing essays behind a computer screen that will not reach the average uncurious and unphilosophical voter.
If I were to train a few libertarian activists, and have the same budget that the National LP has every four years, WY would already be libertarian, and setting an example for the other 49 states to follow.
AK started to go libertarian in 1980, and was then derailed by internal and infiltrator-encouraged stupidity/ lack of sophistication. The LP had 4 state legislators in both AK and NH. In NH, they were 1/100 of the state legislature (largest un the union), in AK they were 1/5 of the state legislature (smallest in the union, tied with DE). That every libertarian isn’t intimately familiar with this fact is pathetic, and indicitive of how little individualist politics are taken seriously by thier alleged primary supporters.
The true serious problem with the LP?
It is comprised of comfortable ex-Republicans who don’t care to lift a finger to demand individual freedom. These are comfortable people, who choose to remain comfortable, rather than perform the difficult and dangerous work of TALKING TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
When that changes, we will have liberty.
-Jake Witmer
907-250-5503
Excellent, excellent piece Kyle. I echo some of the same principles in my website that’s devoted not to libertarian activism–but instead to reducing our interaction with the government. If there’s no copyright issues I’d love to republish it on my blog. http://www.therepublicisdead.com
I call optimism fail on you.
You could be right, Mike. I wrote this almost a year ago, and my optimism has increased since then.
Chris, I don’t think that is incompatible with the divide I cited. Isn’t fighting against fascism just fighting to make the system into something more compatible with what we want? Fighting for freedom is what I am talking about, and freedom is ultimately a personal and individual matter. Let them have their system, just let them have it without us.
Mariana, thanks.
Jake, I hardly know where to start, so I will start where you did. This is not defeatism. I’m pointing to a way I think we can win. But I don’t define winning as taking the hill the enemy is standing on, because we don’t need that hill. Let them camp up there and pretend they own the world. We’ll settle the valley, and if they come down after us, well, then we’re fighting them on our own ground. And if they wait too long, we’ll be too big for them to take on.
I know quite a bit about electoral politics, and have thought it through, over years and years of trying different things. I’ve watched all that “exciting progress” and those 3% vote counts ebb and flow, and the very marginal improvements in real freedom they’ve produced get swallowed up by the next wave of statism. Every time.
Your assumption that the “thing most likely to work” is “concentrating our vote” flies in the face of four decades of empirical evidence. Do you want to win your freedom, or do you want to defeat your white whale?
Well done.
Excellent article Kyle.
Kyle
We’ve never met but I lived in Colorado for 20 years fighting th good fight and ended up with sentiments similar to those you expressed in your essay.
Bravo, Kyle!
Most enjoyable to read. I find it comforting to know there are individuals like you and like myself out there.
Be the change you want to see. Live free in your personal life and eventually political liberty will follow.
Cheers, comrade.
Bravo! Kyle.
Thank you.
Excellent post Kyle, you summed it up very well. I don’t see it as a defeatist attitude at all. If it seemed possible to fix the system from the inside I may still put effort into it but I don’t believe it is possible. I will continue to applaud the success of freedom everywhere, whether it is the free state project, Ron Paul movement or the Libertarian Party, but I don’t think true freedom will come from this. I don’t even think minarchy can come from the inside. We must just turn around and walk away if we want to be free.
great write up Kyle! I shared it with every statist I know.
Err those two statements can’t both be true at the same time.
Shouldn’t the second part be “and those who *know* the only way forward is to allow the system to fail”?
Academic, but aren’t you still responsible for everything your agent enabled or did while in office?
+1
Superb, Kyle. I love it. Galt’s Gulch in Cyberspace. Of course Gogulski brings hope to my eyes with his little list of possibilities. I might add Pecunix.com. Mailvault.com. The online freedom academy Tolfa.us.
Glenn
I swear to Dog, if Witmer writes “Konkinist defeatism” one more time I’m gonna get all inconsistent on his counter-revolutionary ass.
LOL. Jake’s a great guy but yeah that is grating.
If we’re “Konkinist Defeatists”, guys like him are “Captain Ahabs”. Now we both have names to call each other.
To all the commentors above, thanks for the nice words. George, I guess you’ll require a little more attention than that
Strictly speaking, no. In the former I am emphasizing that there is a cost, a cost which is widely unrecognized, and almost as widely denied. In the latter, I am leading in to a discussion of using such interaction in a way that might have a higher payoff than that cost. So together, the two statements boil down to: “doing has a cost, only do it when the benefit outweighs the cost. I doubt that happens as often as you might think, but you have to trust your own judgment.”
I am also recognizing that people out there in the world and on the street will make compromises on one hand, and on the other hand, some will in fact choose to interact with the system despite the argument I make here because they disagree with it. I wanted to emphasize that whether they are right or wrong about it, making that choice does not preclude agorist activism in addition to political activism.
No. My category is broader. I am talking in this article about a psychological orientation as well as a political strategy. The recognition of it as the only way forward, even if that is correct, requires the prior step of accepting the possibility of it failing, and being willing to let it go without feeling like it has to be saved no matter what.
I’m recognizing some responsibility, but to make the blanket statement that anyone is responsible for “everything” done by an elected official they voted for is unsupportably absolute. There is responsibility, but it is attenuated by the degree of separation from the concrete acts.
And, by the way, I voted against the man still in office (John McCain), so my implied sanction applies only to the validity of the seat, not to the man. In any case, that is why I noted that in the bio blurb, I don’t like having even that little bit of responsibility attached to me, and I acknowledge the mistake.
As already stated by others, this is a very eloquent post. Thank you for it. When speaking of political activism versus an agorist approach, I’m more and more getting excited about a third option that bridges the two. I’m coming to think that political activism that strives for an agorist approach is the winning strategy. I’m convinced that there are already enough people out there who want the federal government out of their lives that, if through effective activism, we organized them all, we could get somewhere. The Ron Paul Constitutionalists and the most ardent Glenn Beck coming-around-but-still-have-a-ways-to-go Republicans combined number in the tens of millions. I really think that most of these people are just one super effective eye-opening piece of propaganda away from ‘getting it.’ Do we have a Michael Moore or a Malcolm Gladwell in our movement, who can make the one hit movie or write the one phenom book that convinces these people that our central state is a hopeless enterprise, that the bad incentives in democracy are more powerful than any ideology? I think an astounding number of them are close. And if we can get the number who get it into the tens of millions, can we organize all of them so that we all agree to take the plunge together, to one day decide that Washington is no longer legitimate and we won’t pay its taxes or mind its laws, and we’ll do it together to create a safety in numbers? Taking that first step away from Washington, even if we leave the state and local apparatus in place would be the first game changer in centuries. I know ideas like this are a long-time libertarian fantasy, but as I’ve watched things unfold since the Lehman collapse, I really think something like this is in reach if we work for it.
Glad to see this article grew wings! I’ve bookmarked this site.
Thanks to you, ML. I linked to it on PoL from a comment over on the social network side, and these guys picked it up.
First, I think that some fellow voluntaryists make a false dichotomy between politics and other forms of activism. Election politics and civil disobedience are different animals, yes, but they are both forms of the scientific study of society, politics.
I take Spooner’s lesson that voting does not equal consent, and we hurt ourselves by surrendering that debate to statists. I believe that certain actions at certain times are more beneficial than at other times.
From my personal experience, I have personally persuaded others engaged in election politics to voluntaryism or at least had them critically examine statism. The election politics arena provides for interested prospects we can persuade to complete liberty.
Well written essay. It is easy (at least for me) to get so involved in one aspect of withdrawing from the system that I loose sight of the other ways we participate on a day-to-day basis. We need to be able to remove our support on many levels simultaneously. Thanks for the reminder.
Gogulski made reference to this concept:
http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm