In Defense of Anagorism

political economy in the non-market, non-state sector

Introducing the WordPress blog ‘Anagory’

Anagory or anagorism is offered as an alternative to agorism. Anagorism is like free market anticapitalism but minus the market part. Topics of interest include:

  • continuing the search for end runs around the Iron Laws of Economics.
  • seeking strategies that assume the validity of the Iron Laws, but look to salvage the maximum possible amount of idealism from compromises between what we believe to be true (i.e. competition) and what we believe to be right (i.e. solidarity).
  • unmasking the Invisible Hand through reverse engineering and radically transparent projects in economic cooperation.
  • networking and brainstorming with like-minded people.

This blog is created as a migration to WordPress of the Blogger blog Es un alimento muy completo. I will start by rewriting and refining those posts at alimento which are fairly directly related to the subject of anagory, and hopefully will be inspired enough to break ground on new anagorist arguments and topics.

Comments

6 responses to “Introducing the WordPress blog ‘Anagory’”

  1. Mr WordPress Avatar

    Hi, this is a comment.
    To delete a comment, just log in, and view the posts’ comments, there you will have the option to edit or delete them.

  2. freemarketanticapitalist Avatar

    Thanks for the mention, Lori.

    Actually, there’s probably more commonality between anagorism and free market anticapitalism than even your statement suggests. As most market anarchists use it, “market” includes gift economies, communalism, mutual aid, and the like — not just the cash nexus. What I want is a society where all interactions are voluntary; I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of total subsistence for most people were obtained through the moneyless economies of neighborhood cohousing projects, communes, extended family compounds, and assorted other primary social units.

    1. n8chz Avatar

      I know that. One thing you should know about me is that I reserve my harshest criticism for those I respect. As for the question of whether the actually-free market is more liberatory than not, well, my approach is “exploratory.”

  3. freemarketanticapitalist Avatar

    Fair enough — harsh away! FWIW, if my only choices are between the fake “free market” — i.e. real corporatism — of Reaganism/Thatcherism, and honest corporatism with worker protections, I’ll take the latter any day.

    1. n8chz Avatar

      So it is with the lesser evil game. I’m assuming what you call honest corporatism is the same thing some people call “Rhine capitalism?” The thing that sometimes turns me off to left libertarianism is the whole question of ambiguous cases between fake “free market” and freed market. For example, does the Cato Institute fall clearly under one category or the other? Or is it an ambiguous case?

  4. freemarketanticapitalist Avatar

    I’d say it’s a mixed bag. Right-leaning “vulgar libertarianism” is too prevalent in the free market movement. There are those who grope at the anti-corporate implications of free market principles, and don’t take them to their logical conclusions or apply them fully.

    In general, I’d say the “freed market” types are to establishment libertarianism what Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, etc., were to establishment communism. Or maybe what the workers councils in East Germany 1953, Czecholslovakia 1968, etc., were to the Party establishments in those countries. It’s a matter of recuperating an ideology, turning its concepts into contested terrain, using the master’s tools to tear down the master’s house, take your pick of cliches.

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