Whether or not SEK3 is a founder of Left Libertarianism rests upon how intimately connected his core principles are to those of the movement. 

What are the Basic Principles of Left Libertarianism?

A great deal of confusion surrounds the meaning of “Left Libertarianism.” The term is difficult to define with specificity because little consensus exists on basic principles, even among leading advocates. This is strange. When a qualifier attaches to a noun, it usually narrows down the definition of the thing to which the noun refers. An anarcho-capitalist, for example, is an advocate of capitalism who is also an anarchist. In what sense does the adjective “Left” narrow down the definition of a “libertarian” as someone who rejects the initiation of force?

As a general statement that has exceptions, Left Libertarians are anti-statists who specialize in advancing a vision of social justice, especially for workers, the oppressed, or average people. They focus on causes that are more often associated with the left than with the right. Most Left Libertarians oppose capitalism because they believe this economic system runs counter to social justice; many of them reject private property. None of the preceding statements differentiates Left Libertarianism from non-libertarian leftists, however. The distinction: most modern Left Libertarians seek to achieve their vision through free-market means; they want to reconcile individual freedom with social equality. In the process, Left Libertarians usually assume nontraditional stances on the nature of capital and property.  (Again, the foregoing are general statements with important exceptions.)

The etymology or history of the term provides some specific insight into its meaning. In North America, Left Libertarianism has been most commonly and long  associated with the academics Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne who argue for both individual self-ownership and a collective (or egalitarian) “ownership” of natural resources. In recent decades, the movement has evolved to include a faction that defends both individual freedom and private property but focuses on social justice. This shift has led some of the movement’s key theorists to claim Samuel E. Konkin III (SEK3), who originated the political philosophy of Agorism, as a founder of Left Libertarianism.

Does this claim stand up to scrutiny?

The Content of Left Libertarianism

Roderick Long is often viewed as the foremost philosopher of current Left Libertarianism. In an interview, Long offered a sense of the movement. Acknowledging that many “different things that have been called” Left Libertarianism, he stated,

“In the 1970s a guy named Samuel Konkin created something he called the Movement of the Libertarian Left—and though what I’m talking about is broader than that, a lot of what I’m talking about comes out of that movement. He was someone who was concerned with continuing the Rothbard strategy of alliance with the Left after Rothbard had given up on it. He was also an anti-political thinker—meaning he was against electoral politics—and in favor of a passive revolution from below.”

In other words, SEK3 is a foundational building block of Left Libertarianism, if not its founder.

Another prominent Left Libertarian theorist, Kevin Carson, stated,

“To the extent that we have some historical continuity with the old Movement of the Libertarian Left…our core membership is probably left-Rothbardians going back to Rothbard’s New Left project with Karl Hess and Sam Konkin’s agorist development of that project. But we’re really a sort of catchall of people from different movements that share the basic principle of promoting left-wing ends (an end to economic exploitation, more egalitarian property distribution, etc.) with free market means. There are quite a few non-Rothbardians…Tucker individualist anarchists like me and some anarchy-Georgist types.”

Other leaders disagree.

The Left Libertarian philosopher Matt Zwolinski harkened back to the original meaning of the term in aligning with “Vallentyne, who represents a school of left libertarianism with which the general public is more familiar. Vallentyne advocates full self-ownership and and egalitarian ownership of natural resources or an egalitarian distribution of the value of natural resources. He calls this ‘liberal egalitarianism’.”

Zwolinski contrasted Vallentyne with later

“people like Roderick Long, Kevin Carson, Murray Rothbard…Joseph Stromberg, etc….This group seems to standardly embrace both individual self-ownership and the legitimacy of full property rights in external goods via some sort of labor-mixing or homesteading account. What makes them ‘left,’ as I understand it, is that they share with many on the political left the belief that existing forms of ‘capitalism’ are deeply unjust, especially to workers. The reason *why* existing capitalism is unjust, however, is that it has deviated from libertarian principles, largely by using the powers of the state to benefit big business at the expense of labor.”

[Note: Zwolinski’s analysis is misleading on some points. Rothbard never believed capitalism per se was deeply unjust to anyone, for example; he reserved this criticism for state-capitalism.]

Zwolinski and a significant percentage of Left Libertarians embrace some form of Georgism, which stands for the collective ownership of natural resources and against private property. One of the “later” Left Libertarians through which the movement has evolved is the journalist and editor Sheldon Richman. He explained more simply that Left Libertarians “are standard libertarians in that they believe in the moral legitimacy of private ownership and free exchange and oppose all government interference in personal and economic affairs—a groundless, pernicious dichotomy.” The practical and political differences between the two groups—represented by Zwolinski and Richman—is profound.

Zwolinski goes further than many Georgists. He advocates a universal basic income to redistribute wealth, presumably through a mechanism similar to a Georgist-style Single Tax. How this tax would be collected and redistributed without a state is not clear; arguably, a state-style mechanism would be required, which seems to contradict the anti-statism of the movement. A universal basic income is hardly a new idea within the movement, however. According to the Progressive Review, Steiner’s essay, Compensation for liberty lost: Left libertarianism and unconditional basic income offers “not only a robust justification of a basic income as compensation for private ownership of our natural inheritance, but a practical account of how it can be funded.”

Perhaps the best umbrella description of the mixed bag that is modern Left Libertarianism came from the economist and outsider David Friedman. He wrote, “I think the closest one can come to fitting all the meanings of ‘left libertarian’ may be ‘libertarians who agree with leftists on more things than most libertarians do’, with the particular areas of agreement varying from one person to another.”

The “varying” (dis)agreements seem incredibly significant.

Friedman may be correct that Left Libertarians share a general approach rather than consistent principles. To some degree, Richman seems to concur:

“They are leftists in that they share traditional left-wing concerns about exploitation and inequality for example, that are largely ignored, if not dismissed, by other libertarians. Left-libertarians favor worker solidarity vis-à-vis bosses, support poor people’s squatting on government or abandoned property, and prefer that corporate privileges be repealed before the regulatory restrictions on how those privileges may be exercised.”

Richman’s description contains some truth. Traditional libertarianism emphasized individual rights rather than non-violent social conditions, such as inequality of income. There is a reason for this, however. Left Libertarians collapse into one package what Rothbardians and many other libertarian traditions handle as separate but related categories: political justice (anything that is peaceful) and moral justice (how peaceful individuals should act). In other words, libertarians focus on how to both maximize an individual’s rights and to fulfill the individual’s duty to society—namely, to respect the same rights of all others. Libertarians have personal codes of moral behavior and some argue actively for them—telling the truth to people and not abusing animals are examples of moral behavior. And most are acutely aware that cultural and social factors deeply impact individual rights and are important to address. This is why leading mainstream libertarian theorists—Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek, for instance—emphasized social issues as well as political ones. This is why “civil liberties” receive so much attention: e.g. freedom of speech, due process, sex worker rights, freedom of assembly, and the right to work.

Nevertheless, the Richman distinction is valid. As a political philosophy, traditional libertarianism prioritizes political justice and freedom over moral concerns; it advocates peaceful behavior first and foremost, and leaves the ultimate decision of how to behave up to the peaceful individual. Again, there are reasons. For one, imposing morality violates the individual rights of non-violent people. It is also impossible to do. If a moral stance is assumed due to coercion or threats, then this stance is obedience, not morality. Real morality can be “enforced” only through non-violent means, such as persuasion in all its active forms. Several schools of libertarianism, such as Voluntaryism, focus on methods of achieving non-violent social change and they should not be ignored.

With a better understanding of Left Libertarianism and where it stands vis-a-vis traditional libertarianism, the main question remains. How does SEK3 fit into the picture?

SEK3’s Definitions Compared to Those of Left Libertarianism

[A caveat: The ensuing statements are broad strokes meant to provide a rough comparison to SEK3 and Agorism in order to encourage conversation.]

The insistence on peaceful means—that is, using the free market to achieve justice, whether political or social—is a bond between Agorism and Left Libertarianism. The differences between them will be found by comparing SEK3’s positions on key issues that reflect underlying principles with the positions of Left Libertarianism: anti-statism, property (land) ownership, capitalism, and class analysis. Other important but derivative subjects, such as the opposition to war, have been omitted due to space constraints.

Anti-statism. SEK3 had a specific approach to anarchism. He denounced any participation in electoral politics or cooperation with government. Agorists intersect with the State as little as possible because the purest expression of anarchism is to refuse the State any acknowledgment, other than the attention that is necessary to avoid it. They commit to a life in which the State is irrelevant. Agorists refuse to vote, pay taxes, apply for licenses, use corporations, file legal documents, or render any obedience except at the point of a gun—literally or figuratively. In short, Agorism is lived anarchism that resides in the daily choices of exponents. This is how the State withers away—not by voting or through violent revolution. The State dies when people refuse to need it and, instead, create peaceful alternatives to whatever market services have been usurped.

Left Libertarianism eschews electoral politics and pursues alternate institutions but it is not clear that the movement embraces lived anarchism. There are several stumbling blocks to it doing so. One is the powerful streak of Georgism in its midst which would require coercively collecting money from homesteaders and hiring agents to evict dissenters. The redistribution of wealth would require a massive State-like bureaucracy to assess claims and dole out the tax money. This mechanism may be decentralized or democratically established, but the coercion remains the same. By contrast, free-market property rights, like homesteading, do not impose a tax or redistribute wealth as a prerequisite to ownership.

The closest SEK3 came to commenting on a single-tax is an excerpt from Volume 4, Number 2, 1979 of Clear Ether! on why Agorism would be more moral and just than the current society: namely, the lack of conflict. “No taxes,” he wrote, “because there is no government to collect or demand them.” [Emphasis added.] SEK3 was not a Georgist.

There is another more controversial reason that many Left Libertarians cannot claim to be living anarchism; the subject is not considered polite to raise, however, and it is something of a third rail. Remember: Agorism involves aggressively eschewing and renouncing cooperation with the State. Nevertheless,  quite a few leading advocates of Left Libertarianism work at universities or other institutions where their salaries consist largely of tax money in one form or other. If they believe taxation is theft, if they are anti-statist, then such Left Libertarians  argue for principles that directly contradict the choices they make on a daily basis. The arrangement is entered into at the point of a gun; it is one for which they trained for years, competed to acquire, and which they embrace each day. Participating in the State and receiving its largesse is a choice.

In his 1973 article, Cui Bono? Introduction to Libertarian Class Theory (1973), SEK3 addressed a common retort he received from tax-consuming libertarians:

“The charge immediately arises that nearly everybody in the modern complex mixed economy makes gains and losses from the State’s actions. Separation and accounting is extraordinarily difficult. Libertarians must agree but respond that firstly, one can improve the moral character of one’s own life by…maximizing the non-coercive ones and minimizing the coercive ones.”

In short, do not seek out tax funds; interact with the State as little as possible without literally endangering yourself. Those who voluntarily interact and use the excuse of ‘everyone must use the roads’ are rationalizing their active acceptance of the State.

“Secondly,” SEK3 continued “those who are obviously suffering heavy oppression deserve the priority attention from those libertarian humanists concerned with aiding and relieving victims of the State.”

The people who pay the tax-funded salaries always deserve more support that those who receive them—if the latter deserves any at all.

Further, SEK3 doubted that “those who are obviously gaining overwhelmingly by the State” can fight for freedom. Instead, they should become “priority targets of those libertarian activists interested in achieving a just society.” Those who compete for tax funding are not as innocuous as people who interact with the State in order to gain a driver’s license, for example, because such a forced payment does not harm others. A tax-derived salary does. Against their will, other people bear the cost of providing an income to the tax consumer. This places the consumer in a similar moral position as that of the original thief—the State; they enrich themselves from a violation of rights. SEK3 called such people “Library Libertarians.” He wrote in the New Libertarian Manifesto (NLM), “’Library Libertarians, you know those who profess some theoretical variant of libertarianism but eschew practice, should be encouraged to practice what they preach.” The actions of Left Libertarianism’s Library Activists prevent them from living anarchism. Instead, they live statism. (Libertarians from other schools are equally guilty of this anti-agorist pro-statist practice, of course.)

The Foundation of Property (Land) Ownership. Perhaps the closest SEK3 came to stating the nature of property occurred in his work on intellectual property (IP)—copyright and patents—which he adamantly rejected. His article, Copywrongs, argued, “Property is a concept extracted from nature by conceptual man to designate the distribution of scarce goods—the entire material world—among avaricious, competing egos.” People create property rights as a way to adjudicate who has proper title to a scarce good—that is, the right of ownership—with scarcity being key to property’s value.

SEK3 only wrote on this topic in passing, unfortunately, and only to assert that human beings had the right to own property. In NLM, for example, he stated, “Libertarianism investigated the nature of man to explain his rights deriving from non-coercion. It immediately followed that man (woman, child, Martian, etc.) had an absolute right to this life and other property—and no right to the life or property of others.”

Land for shelter and the production of food certainly falls into property that is necessary to sustain life. Based on his nature, a person has an “absolute right” to  peacefully provide for his life, which makes property a natural right.

Land ownership based on human nature was a repeating theme in SEK3’s work. His article, Agorists=The Anti-Utopian Visionaries, comments on the objections that some anarchists level at such land ownership; namely, it is historically rooted  in conquest, which negates its legitimacy. These anarchists believe “cooperation and voluntary action will somehow allocate goods without the need for specific boundaries around the material in the universe.”

SEK3 distinguished agorists from those who held “this utopian, and ultimately fear-ridden, view of Property. They [agorists] perceive their existence to require material substance, and they do not draw their lines around the narrow-outlook boundaries the bodies they chance to be born with…Agorists see Property as a fact of human nature… They embrace this Truth joyfully and develop their libertarianism toward eliminating conflict among the Individuals in Society, and allowing each and all to expand in permissible dimensions without limit: Peace and Profit!“ [Note: bold face in the original.]

Elsewhere, SEK3 discussed an individual’s right to restitution from polluters and expressed other sentiments that indicated a more traditionally-based system of property rights. His embrace of Ludwig von Mises as an economic mentor and icon, for example, occurred without mention of disagreement with the Misesian basis of property, and SEK3 was never shy about airing disagreements; he publicly disputed with Rothbard on a detailed list of issues but not on homesteading as the basis of ownership.

Indeed, in his book, An Agorist Primer, SEK3 touches on the intimately connected concept of “rent”—the leasing of property you own—a practice to which many Left Libertarians object. “Land is a fixed form of capital,” he wrote, “and—if we are in a free market—we should expect rent to come to equal the rate of return as in other investments — assuming no risks (where profit would be added or subtracted).” SEK3 rejected Tucker’s claim that rent was a form of usury, commenting that Tucker “had problems with economics, not understanding subjective value or the validity of rent, interest, and profit.” If rent on land is valid, then the private ownership of land that is not directly consumed or occupied is also valid occupancy.

Nevertheless, some Left Libertarians claim that SEK3 was a “soft proprietarian,” as one commentator phrased it. The term is not well-defined nor sourced back to SEK3’s writings, which makes it impossible to substantiate or argue against effectively. Presumably, the term refers to one of two positions. First, SEK3 allegedly advocated private property in land if it was personally used and occupied; the preceding paragraph dispels this claim. The second interpretation: SEK3 adopted a collectivist theory of land ownership, such as Georgism, at least for public spaces. If this means he acknowledged the validity of the voluntary collective ownership of land, then the term is applied accurately. An Agorist Primer states, “A few libertarians advocate communal or neighborhood social organization with collectively held ‘property’ voluntarily surrendered.”

This presented no problem to SEK3 as long as the collectively held property started with private land that had been “voluntary surrendered.” In short, he believed  voluntary common property was legitimate. This is also an accurate description of almost every other school of libertarianism, however.

Anti-capitalism. Which definition of capitalism is being used by Left Libertarians and by SEK3? Long explained the complexity of this question. “Libertarians sometimes debate whether the ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ meaning of a term like ‘capitalism’ is (a) the free market, or (b) government favoritism toward business, or (c) the separation between labor and ownership, an arrangement neutral between the other two; Austrians tend to use the term in the first sense; individualist anarchists in the Tuckerite tradition tend to use it in the second or third.”

Because the ordinary usage of the word “capitalism” is “an amalgamation of [these] incompatible meanings,” Long doubts the word’s usefulness in communicating. When used by current Left Libertarians, however, capitalism tends to be ‘defined’ in the second or third sense; that is, capitalism is viewed as a corruption of the free market.

Many Left Libertarians adopt a version of the definition offered by Carson—the best known advocate of the old-fashioned mutualism championed by American individualist anarchists of the 19^th century. Carson defined capitalism as “a system of privilege in which the State enable[s] the owners of capital to draw monopoly returns on it, in the same sense that the feudal ruling class was able to draw monopoly returns on land.”

Mutualists believe ownership of land comes from personal occupancy. They think a genuinely free market would eliminate the most prominent aspects of capitalism, such as rent and interest. Interest rates would be driven toward zero, for example, causing the traditional capitalist structure to give way to worker-owned and operated firms.

SEK3’s, An Agorist Primer, more neutrally states, “Sometimes the terms ‘free enterprise’ and ‘capitalism’ are used to mean ‘free market’. Capitalism means the ideology (ism) of capital or capitalists.”  SEK3 generally rejected the word “capitalism” because he thought most meanings were counter-productive, but he aligned with the term’s “free market” meaning. For one thing, he had immense respect for and familiarity with Austrian economists, like Mises and Rothbard, who used “capitalism” to mean laissez-faire. Whether or not he adopted this usage, SEK3 respected those who did.

SEK3’s approach to capital, including rent and interest, contrasted with that of Carson and mutualism. The Primer explains,

“land earns rent, and money earns interest. With an efficient medium of exchange, an entrepreneur will quickly shift from capital goods of one type to another if the rate of return is higher in one sector of the market than the other. Land is a fixed form of capital, and—ifwe are in a free market—we should expect rent to come to equal the rate of return as in other investments—assuming no risks (where profit would be added or subtracted). And so it is with interest.”

Whether or not you agree with his analysis—and I do not—SEK3 clearly did not reject rent or interest. Nor did he reject making profit from rent or interest. “Originary interest is what money earns if you lend it out to an entrepreneur risk-free,” he wrote. “Should you accept risk yourself, you may add on a risk component, a form of profit. At the same level of risk, in a highly developed market, interest rates should stabilize and slowly decrease—as wealth increases.”

Again, the analysis may be incorrect, but it accepts the validity of profit. This acceptance put SEK3 at odds with many Left Libertarians, although not with the large number who maintain a more Rothbardian economic stance.

Nevertheless, SEK was averse to the word “capitalism,” partly due to his appreciation of radical history and a desire to embrace revolutionary stances and language.

“Before Marx came along,” he observed, “the pure free-marketeer Thomas Hodgskin had already used the term ‘capitalism’ as a pejorative; capitalists were trying to use coercion—the State—to restrict the market. Capitalism, then, does not describe a free market but a form of statism, like communism.”

What SEK3 rejected is commonly called “state-” or “corporate-capitalism”—a rejection most libertarians share, especially anarchists and Austrian economists.

Much of the confusion about SEK3’s stand on capitalism comes from his extreme dislike for hierarchical relations between employers and employees. To the extent capitalism is associated with corporatism or other top-down arrangements, he may appear anti-capitalist because of his extreme distaste for this form of organization. NLM states, “In an agorist society, division of labor and self-respect of each worker-capitalist entrepreneur will probably eliminate the traditional business organization, especially the corporate hierarchy, an imitation of the State and not the Market.” To SEK3, such organizations violated not merely the economic wellbeing of worker-capitalist entrepreneur but also their humanity.

The Summer 1978 issue of The Storm! A Journal for Free Spirits published “Agorists = The Anti-Utopian Visionaries: A First Introduction to the Positions of the Market-Anarchists.” Here, SEK3 spelled out his position”

“It may surprise some Anarchists from the Left that hard-core Agorists sneer at the wage System as something fitting for Medieval Europe (or modern Russia), a hang-over of feudal organizational methods incompatible with high-powered free enterprise. Their Vision of Devision [sic] of Labor foresees the ‘withering away’ of the Worker function with the rise of cybernetics and robotics, and a great expansion of the Capitalist, and especially Entrepreneurial, economic functions of Humans.”

He applauded this expansion of the Capitalist functions of Humans as long as it was decentralized and not hierarchical.

SEK3’s rejection of corporatism is a point of agreement with Left Libertarianism. As Richman observed, “left-libertarians tend to harbor a bias against wage employment and the often authoritarian corporate hierarchy to which it is subject. Workers today are handicapped by an array of regulations, taxes, intellectual-property laws, and business subsidies that on net impede entry to potential alternative employers and self-employment.”

By contrast, SEK3 viewed the current economic system as detrimental to employers as well as to employees. “Non-Market Anarchists see the employment of workers as ‘exploitation’ desired and practiced by employers,” he explained. “Market Anarchists see employment as a sacrifice chosen by workers with irrational insecurities and unwillingness to accept risk; as almost compelled upon employers who would be far better served (in the account books) by dealing with contractors who would accept risks themselves for completion of work projects.”

The system harmed everyone but the state and the elite.

SEK3 suggested a healthy substitute: self employment and entrepreneurship. “[Agorism] shares a desire with most individualist anarchists to have an economy in which workers are also owners of the business they work in.” SEK3 clearly believed corporate hierarchy would wither away under Agorism, like Marx believed the State would wither away under communism. Forcefully abolishing the business hierarchy ran against his philosophy, however, because he respected the sanctity of voluntary relationships. Employees and employers in a hierarchy had agreed to a self-destructive and feudalistic arrangement, SEK3 maintained, but they had agreed to do so. For purposes of this article, it does not matter if SEK3’s assessment of hierarchical business is correct; Rothbard vigorously contended it was not.  All that matters is how SEK3’s economic theories compare to those of Left Libertarianism.

Agorism accords nicely with Left Libertarianism on anti-corporatism; both contend that corporations exist due to state privileges, like limited liability, which means they are extensions of the state. SEK3 once remarked, “All corporations want to grow up to be governments.” But once the state withered away, so would corporations. On “capitalism,” both schools reject the term, perhaps for different reasons. But SEK3 accepted the use of capital for profit and, in discussing agorist class theory, he considered non-state capitalists to be a neutral class in its impact on society. [See ensuing section on class theory.]

Class Analysis. In his article, Black‐Market Activism: Agorism and Samuel Edward Konkin III, attorney David S. D’Amato claimed another link between SEK3 and Left Libertarianism: class analysis:

“Agorism embraces the notion of class war and entails a distinctly libertarian analysis of class struggle and stratification. After Konkin’s death in 2004, agorists like Wally Conger continued the development of agorist class analysis, setting it up as a refutation of and alternative to Marx’s communist theory of class.”

The most familiar type of class analysis is Marxist, which categorizes people by  their relationship to the means of production; are they workers or capitalists? Traditional libertarian analysis also postulates two antagonistic classes based on Franz Oppenheimer’s classic book, The State. For Oppenheimer, an irresolvable warfare existed  between society (the productive class) and the state (the parasitic class) that lived on the body of society, draining it. SEK3 approached class analysis differently. Agorism postulated three classes, upon which Conger expanded in his fascinating book, Agorist Class Theory: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis.

The first consists of entrepreneurs who, as creators and risk takers, are a positive good to society and the strength of the free market. The second category are holders of capital who are basically neutral and not necessarily enlightened; examples are coupon clippers and mortgage holders. The third class is formed by state capitalists, including the State itself and all its agents. This class is a social evil because it uses institutionalized violence to usurp wealth and power from the other two classes.

The redistribution of wealth occurs without sparking revolution because average people are brainwashed about the basics of economics; for example, they think a valid currency needs a state to issue and regulate it. The work of agorists is to dispel the economic lies and “pseudoscience” that people had absorbed by cultural osmosis and in public schools. Only then would the eyes of the public open to the parasitic nature of the state and corporatism.

SEK3’s unfinished book, Agorism Contra Marxism, points out major advantages of agorist class theory over that of Marxist or leftist theory, which is closer to that of Left Libertarianism:

“The entrepreneurial problem is unsolvable for Marxism because Marx failed to recognize the economic category. The best Marxists can do is lump them with new, perhaps mutated, capitalist forms…Marxism also does not deal with the persistent Counter-Economy (i.e., a peaceful black market or underground economy).”

Counter-economists or black-market entrepreneurs, SEK3 argued, destroy the structure of Marxist class theory and, ultimately, Marxism itself. Marxist theory maintains that “the black marketeers cannot be a class.” Yet black-market entrepreneurs are a self-aware class that is bound together by “the commonality of risk, arising from a common source (the State)”– a commonality that is “as strong as” Marxist “class unity.” Marxism may try to lump counter-economists into the proletariat or capitalist slots but the unifying bond of entrepreneurial risk is not shared by either of those categories. “Again, to make it clear,” SEK3 reiterated, “if the ‘entrepreneuriat’ are tossed into the capitalist class, then the Marxist must face the contradiction of ‘capitalists’ at war with the capitalist-controlled State. At this point, Marx’s class analysis is in shreds.” Class analysis is the foundation of Marxism; without it, the system collapses along with socialism.

Agorist class theory is the death of leftist class theory.

And, yet, D’Amato draws a direct connection between SEK3 and  Joshua King Ingalls, an advocate of voluntary socialism who deeply influenced 19th-century individualist anarchists on issues such as land reform.

D’Amato writes, “Like Konkin, Ingalls advocated free trade and free markets while assailing the prevailing capitalist economy as a system of coercive class rule, its distributions of wealth and economic power emanating ultimately from state power. Twentieth century libertarians, in contrast, have tended to see economic methods and analytic approaches as vindicating capitalist economic and social relations, capitalists as friends or ambassadors of the libertarian philosophy.”

This is a misleading interpretation of SEK3’s approach to economic theory upon which agorist class analysis is based. He saw corporatism—a partnership of commerce and the state—as “a system of coercive class rule,” not capitalism per se. After all, without the state, the capitalist class had a neutral impact on society.

Moreover, SEK3 acknowledged how essential Austrian economics was to Agorism. His article, The Last, Whole Introduction to Agorism, explains,

“Austrian School economics, particularly Ludwig von Mises’ uncompromising praxeology, was, most appealingly, uncompromising…Mises died at his moment of triumph: Moses, Christ and Marx to the libertarian movement rising out of the ashes of the New Left and its dialectic opponent, the student Right. Murray Rothbard was the Gabriel, St. Paul, and Lenin. Rather than watering down praxeology to gain establishment acceptance and Nobel Prizes…Rothbard insisted on radicalizing Austrianism still further.”

If libertarianism proper has a flaw with regard to capitalism or Big Business, it is this: too many defend corporations as a legitimate part of laissez-faire capitalism; that is, they believe corporations would exist in some form without the state—perhaps sans limited liability.

In his 1977 article, Corporativism Revivus, published in the Southern Libertarian Review, SEK3 lamented a Los Angeles Supper Club experience.

“To my utter surprise and dismay, Robert LeFevre and Seymour Leon, two West Coast big guns of hard-core libertarianism, actually defended the corporate concept…The thing we could finally agree on as a starting point is that the incorporation and limited liability should not be enforced by law—but LeFevre, Leon and others actually believe that the fiction of ‘corporate responsibility’ replacing individual responsibility would be voluntarily accepted in a free market.”

The debate on the propriety of corporations per se is ongoing within libertarianism but it should not conflated with  an acceptance of state capitalism.

The foregoing comparisons between Agorism and Left Libertarianism are far from exhaustive due to constraints of time and space. But the concepts compared are fundamental to each philosophy and numerous enough to provide a decent sense of whether SEK3 was an influence upon or a founder of Left Libertarianism.

Conclusion

Comparing Agorism to Left Libertarianism immediately confronts a methodological difficulty.

The kernel of Agorism is sharply defined. It rests on counter economics—that is, on a network of broadly defined black-market entrepreneurship in which participants avoid the State as assiduously as possible. Without violence or a traditional revolution, a free society is constructed within the shell of a gradually diminishing State. As an ideology, however, Agorism was never well spun out and it must be gleaned from articles, interviews, unfinished manuscripts and ephemera. SEK3 was a system builder—a theorist who integrates a wide range of fields around a common theme—but  he never completed the structure. His system remains a patchwork—at times, no more than hints—which allow admirers to piece the ideology of Agorism together in ways that serve their purposes.

Comparisons can be problematic.

The core principle(s) of Left Libertarianism are far less sharp and can resemble flowing water. Sometimes, they contradict each other. Ideologically, the cause might fit more comfortably into several overlapping movements, including Georgism, mutualism, and free-market anti-capitalism. This makes comparisons complex and problematic.

There is considerable agreement between Agorism and many Left Libertarians, however, on specific issues such as anti-statism and corporatism. But there is also significant disagreement, such as on capitalism and class theory. Does this make SEK3 a significant influence or a founder of Left Libertarianism? The answer hinges on the difference between the two.

Part One of this essay listed several criteria that a person should meet to merit being called a founder of any movement.

1. The person’s impact must be unique, meaning that it did not come from another source. SEK3 fits this description. To the extent Left Libertarianism has adopted agorist principles and strategies, they clearly come from SEK3.

2. The adoption needs to be extensive. That is, the person’s impact should diffuse through most of the movement. SEK3 is not an easy fit here. He undoubtedly influenced some areas and some advocates of Left Libertarianism deeply. Other areas and advocates do not seem impacted at all, preferring the theories of Henry George, Gustav de Molinari, Steiner, Vallentyne and others.

No one has ascertained the size of each faction within the movement—that is, the percentage its adherents constitute of the whole. And the factions tend to be inconsistent; Georgists argue for the collective ownership of resources while Mutualists generally accept a labor-based version of ownership while many quasi-Rothbardians embrace a more traditionally libertarian view of private property. Libertarianism proper also has inconsistent factions but it does have an organizing definition: the belief that initiating force is never justified. By contrast, Left Libertarianism seems to be organized around a vague description; it gravitates toward causes that are considered more left- than right-wing. The vagueness makes it a difficult movement to anyone to “found” and for outsiders to identify extensive influences. It may be that each faction has separate founders.

3. Another requirement of a founder versus an influencer: his impact should not rest on a single issue within a broad philosophy. Part One explained, “Libertarian anarchism would not view the Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises as a founder, for example, even though his economic contribution is immense. Rothbard has a far better claim because he was a system builder whose system was popularly adopted.” If SEK3 had built a firm network of integrated beliefs, then he might have more claim to be a founder of Left Libertarianism. As it is, he created an elastic framework with a hard center and its effect on the equally elastic framework of Left Libertarianism is unclear.

In his article Libertarian Left: Free-Market Anti-Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, Richman wrote, “At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two wellsprings of modern pro-market left-libertarianism: the theory of political economy formulated by Murray N. Rothbard and the philosophy known as ‘Mutualism’ associated with the pro-market anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon…and the American individualist anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker.” This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but a necessary one, just as much of this essay is unavoidably reductivist.

In short, other theorists have a better claim to be founders that SEK3.

A question remains. Several paths of my research led to articles that argued vehemently that SEK3 was not the founder of Anarcho-capitalism. I began to wonder whether Left Libertarians doth protest too much; that is, why raise a question repeatedly only to counter and dismiss it?

Accordingly, Part Three of “SEK3, Left Libertarianism and Anarcho-Capitalism” will examine whether SEK3 was a founder of Anarcho-capitalism.