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“Conceptually, Voluntaryism is a very simple moral philosophy – it is the basic proposition that all human interaction should be directly consensual. Voluntaryism rejects the initiation of force in all its various forms including physical violence, threats of violence, theft, bullying, slavery, rape, murder, etc. However, unlike Pacifism, Voluntaryism does not bar the victim of coercion from responding in a strictly self-defensive manner.”
- Peter Miller, Introduction to Voluntaryism
Voluntaryism is the moral philosophy that all forms of interaction should be voluntary, and that the only just use of force is defensive force. We abide by the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) which dictates that no action be taken that violates another’s consent if not in self-defense.
If we are to apply this philosophy consistently, then we have to hold the people who call themselves "the government" to the same standards as anyone else. To paraphrase Mark Corske’s “Engines of Domination: Political Power and the Human Emergency”:
Voluntary relations are the opposite of power relations, and communities are best organized by voluntary relations.
That is, relations among equals, and not between rulers and subjects. Voluntaryists are typically not fans of government in principle, nor do they think that the institution of coercive government is necessary. We recognize that there are two ways that people can relate to one another: voluntarily or coercively. Voluntaryists embrace the former and reject the latter.
This also implies that there are no rights that can be granted to an individual that aren’t shared by all individuals - such as any rights one pretends they can grant the “government” to rule over others’ lives and livelihoods. Rights are those actions no individual may prevent others from engaging in without violating their freedom to peacefully co-exist in ways that do not violate the consent of those directly involved. You have the right to use force against those who seek to restrict your rights. Rights can neither be granted nor revoked. They are either respected or not. It is our responsibility to keep tyranny in check.
Ultimately no one thinks that anyone should need to rule over them - especially someone that they didn’t choose themselves - which means no one really supports involuntary rulership over themselves. And yet due to a lack of options as well as various methods of social and psychological conditioning, many people think that some groups possess the right to intimidate and initiate force against others and enslave them. Because some live with intent to enslave, so too must some live with intent to liberate.
Very few set out with the intent to hurt others unprovoked. When considering options available in a provocation with another person, everyone understands that the cops won’t show up in time to help and yet many people still don’t carry self-protection tools or techniques. You have the right to choose strategies, tools, and techniques to defend yourself and should be empowered to do so by not being forced or coerced into funding things you may not agree with.
Self-ownership extends to property. There are distinctions within many philosophies that lead to the concepts such as “abandonment periods” and “sticky property”, which are norms that develop among people which dictate the abandonment conditions or special use cases for certain types of property such as land.
Property is a strategy aimed at the reduction of conflict over scarce resources. It is the concept that an individual or group of individuals can decide the proper state of a particular thing, such as but not limited to who may use it, under what terms, etc.
Pluralism: a condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority, etc., coexist.
There will be countless methods of organization in a pluralist society. People are free to create living situations that suit them. Pluralism would look like many different organization styles and provision-strategies coexisting in a decentralized fashion.
Just as all goods and services presently provisioned by authoritarian centralized States should only be considered as strategies toward meeting needs, rather than as needs in and of themselves (e.g. “police are a strategy for meeting your need for protection, but they are not a need in and of themselves), so too will the keen observer recognize that any one strategy cannot and will not meet the needs and preferences of most, and all attempts to bend that fabric of reality have led to the destruction of freedom for all in various ways.
When someone asks whether there will be a certain type of community or enclave in a pluralist world, the answer is yes, as long as the enclave respects the NAP and employs the SDP (Self-Defense Principle) and RoR (Right of Restitution). The question would be: Do they have healthy boundaries around how other groups choose to organize, trade, and associate with one-another in their own spaces? With pluralism, each enclave is able to exist independently with its own rules, norms, and customs as long as they do not engage in or permit to persist or stand unchecked, aggressive force or coercion. You can’t force others to adopt your norms in areas where voluntary pluralism is the respected norm, except with regard to your person and property.
Pluralism regarding the State would necessitate a shift toward voluntary participation and funding, rather than extortion and threats aimed at forcing centralized goods and services down our throats. This should not be a concern to the keen observer because we see voluntary participation and funding working everywhere in the private sector. Pluralism puts the public’s economic power directly into the hands of its constituents while shielding the masses from any losses sustained by private-sector-imprudence.
Pluralism lends credence to the “if you don’t like it, you can leave” phrase in a voluntary society because you can always choose the other option(s) available and nobody has dominion beyond their actual property. This choosing-power is a very powerful freedom for an individual to possess, and it is worth securing and protecting.
Pluralism replacing winner-takes-all politico-statism would take the perception of power and influence out of the hands of the political elite while giving the public’s constituents (that is, each individual) their voice and power back. Because the cost of failure is borne by the private owner(s) of a voluntary organization rather than “society as a whole” who has no such investment at stake, and because customers are free to choose organizations that best suit their (the customer’s) individual preferences and needs, this is a guaranteed better strategy to meet the needs of humanity in communities of any size or scale. As long as individuals are free to associate and disassociate with whom they choose without punishment or retaliation, pluralism will enable people to thrive and peacefully coexist regardless of the difference in their values or preferences.
You own yourself and therefore possess the higher claim of authority over yourself and the product of your time, intellect, and labor (as an extension of yourself). Therefore, there is no way anyone else can have authority over you or what you own.
Self-ownership is one of the basic tenets of the logic we live by. We have found no evidence to counteract this tenet and thus we hold it as a very secure fact. Every individual reading these words is the sole owner in themselves.
You own your mind through homesteading your body because your body is your home, and you stead it. You exclusively home-stead your mind and body and thus possess the highest claim to exclude others from the use of yourself. You are responsible for and act in good service and upkeep toward your body and mind more than anyone else does or could. For these reasons, you are the perpetual homesteader and owner of your mind and body and exercise the highest claim of authority over yourself.
The philosophy of self-ownership provides a way to navigate some contentious topics. It answers some more obvious questions but does not pretend to provide answers to all questions. However, the rest of the questions can and will be answered by the philosophical application of Directionality.
Directionality will be discussed in the next chapter, but essentially it is a philosophical model like pragmatism that is based on creating positive conclusions and a positive course of action based on an assessment of the current information available. The method of conclusion, as well as the conclusion itself, can be updated as new information is synthesized. This allows for contracts and pluralistic norms that grow and evolve as time goes on and new information becomes available.
Most people would answer that they agree with the tenets of Voluntaryism. The time when this changes is when it comes to controlling and affecting other people’s right to self-ownership through actions of the state. Things like winner-take-all politics, majority-rule voting, and (others) are direct violations of the NAP. There are alternate strategies and solutions to the problems these things aim to solve which do not require force or coercion.
What gives someone a right?
Do you have the right to delegate a right to someone that you don’t have yourself?
If you do not have the right to perform an action yourself, what gives you the right to elect someone to do it on your behalf? (hint: nothing)
A “statist” is someone who believes the state has to exist. In reality, the state has no legitimacy - and we have the opportunity to foster a voluntaryist world in its place. There is no such thing as someone granting a right they do not have themselves. And nobody has a right to make a decision for someone else. All of us who care must outweigh the few who actually want to make others suffer. If there’s an issue with a violation of the NAP, that is a perfect time to discuss and practice some voluntary conflict resolution.
We want people to be able to pursue any avenue they want, as long as it does not harm another individual or group. We recognize people have the ability to govern themselves because they own themselves. We also then necessarily recognize that no individual nor group of individuals has authority over other individuals or groups.
I vote?
It depends. Within the current system, you must be very choosy to be voluntaryist with your voting. In most cases, as with “electing officials”, you are forcing your opinion on another person. If you were able to vote on an issue that only increased freedom, like removing a tax, that would be voluntaryist.
I want to live by a set of rules?
Most likely, yes. All rules can coexist as long as they don’t initiate violence or coercion aka take away the consent of others. All forms of rules are ‘allowed’ as long as they don’t initiate violence or coercion.
If I believe we need the state to enforce rules?
Yes. Look into other means of rule enforcement. There is much literature on this.
If I think that humans cannot govern themselves?
Not necessarily. For example, religious anarchists like Leo Tolstoy believe that God governs humans. In a pluralistic voluntary society people have all sorts of voluntary enclaves with their own versions of governance to choose from.
If I believe in private property?
Not necessarily. There are many different views on property, but most Voluntaryists believe in private property while rejecting compulsory enforcement thereover by a third party. Enforcement of private property is the sole responsibility of the property owner.
To us, agorism is where all actions lead towards bringing down the state (the biggest current threat to freedom) by illegitimizing its involuntary strategies through counter-economics. This can happen as quickly as we make it happen. The scope of what is possible in the next 1-10 years is what has been lacking in most of the freedom spaces we have seen.
Agorism as we see it is a strategy one can employ in order to fight, reduce, or obsolete the state through counter-economics. To align ideologically with agorism does not make one an agorist. Agorism acknowledges that there is an economic war between free markets and State-controlled and extorted markets. By your lifestyle, actions, career, and economic choices, you choose which side of that war you stand on.
Animal rights aside, it is more ethical to consume agorist beef than it is to consume organic vegan produce that you bought at a grocery store if you look at all the taxes that were extorted through the life of the product. The only murder you are funding was of one cow who you could verify was treated well vs. the exploitation of everyone (including murder and death of innocents) when you buy groceries. The focus that will bring us together and sustain us is around how you choose the outer network you are supporting. But when the goods and services offered in the network are too expensive, it can’t get going nor remain sustainable or accessible to its “affiliates”.
Most important for all members of the network is the understanding of how things are when there are no government restrictions, only private people handling their own business. They have to understand that the problem is not with one thing or another, it's not with the language but with the story itself.
Why don’t we write plans in which we are the number one hero of our own life, pursuing our wildest fantasies? It’s not our fault - we are tricked. We are told we will be persecuted by the government if we pursue means that give us the freedom to flourish and grow resilient networks. Instead, each person is living in an isolated node of a largely directionless network of people, unable to offer even their own eyes as backup to a network they actually would benefit from supporting. We have to create a new option. The option where people choose for themselves.
If you could choose how many sources you wanted when it came to organic produce, it might be easy to imagine paring it down to a handful of local farms for your groceries - but if it came down to choosing a police force that would either protect you in a time of need or potentially take you to a cage for any number of reasons whenever they encounter you, having another option can be a matter of life or death.
Why don’t we have more choices when it comes to the protection agencies we fund and are subject to in our own spaces? That is a whole other discussion but the answer to meeting the needs of society is a free market where consumers are allowed to choose the services they want to subscribe to and the agencies they want to be involved in. That market is something each of us have the fortune of securing in this time and for generations to come.
Your “Network” is a physical manifestation of your interactions. Interactions with intention can result in networks with intention, and the clusters and groups of individuals that result therefrom.
Your network already exists. Now, identify your trusted “subnet”, or network of individuals you have established trust with, who share your intention and objective of creating a more free world for themselves and others, and whom you have established sufficient moral and/or ethical common ground with. If they are a potential threat to you or yours, confront them about it and establish healthy boundaries with them. If they do not respect your boundaries, do not consider them a part of your trusted subnet.
Essentially, we are advocating individuals establish decentralized (enclaves), both localized and dispersed, aimed at making freedom more accessible for others. This guide will go into detail about how networks will solve the issue of scaling up from small communities to places that have larger populations.
One of the easiest ways to create more wealth is to make sure your expenditures are not going toward taxes. When you give your time and resources to another in a voluntary exchange, give to those who seek to concentrate their wealth into a network that focuses on manifesting freedom beyond itself. Is the person you're selling your goods/services to an anarchist who is actively seeking to manifest freedom for others? Or are you giving your fruits away to be funneled/fed back into the statist paradigm/system? Vote with your wealth. Let your wealth work for you toward what you're here to accomplish: the abolishment of slavery and freedom of humanity.
Voluntaryists adhere to a philosophy based on the idea that all human interactions should be voluntary. If you take those ideas to their conclusion, you are an anarchist. The world we envision includes voluntary relations between equals, rather than between rulers and subjects.
Anarchy is about individuals deciding for themselves how they will interact with the world. This does not mean they will be able to oppress or aggress upon others without repercussions. Voluntaryism is Anarchy because property rights and self-ownership are immutable but do not ever necessitate coercion or force such as telling others what they can and can’t do with their property. In the current system, do you feel like you have control? In a voluntaryist world, there is no legal way to aggress against others, and you are free to determine the ‘rules’ over your own property.
We define evil as the destruction of freedom. A choice for the lesser of two evils is still a choice for evil and will always result in evil. You never have to choose evil. Just like the trajectory of all evil is more evil, the trajectory of all tyrants, both big and small, is more tyranny. The ends don’t justify the means. The means and the end are the same. Freedom must be taken.
Decisions are best made by the people who are affected by a decision. There are no “one size fits all” solutions that work best for most people. Such “solutions” are usually only made possible through compulsion. The best solution for everyone seeking a voluntary and peaceful world is to resist and refuse involuntary, compulsive strategies while being tolerant and supportive (or at the very least not opposed to) societies consisting of only pluralities of competing voluntary peaceful offerings and solutions to meet the needs of individuals.
Most of us are already Voluntaryists and we all already live in a state of anarchy. We live in anarchy now. We define having “authority” as having power over and the right to exercise that power over someone or something. There is no such thing as authority beyond the self because no one has the right to exercise their will against another’s will. We are free to act as we like. The game of rulers and subjects is just a story we tell ourselves. We are hindered by the people called the police force (see our section on voluntary means of defense).
We can become more free from government bullying by building alternate networks of free people. “Government/the state” is the belief that some people can possess authority (power and the right to exercise it) over other people. The belief that some of us are rulers while the rest of us are subjects and must obey is a story people tell themselves. Some people stand up and defy tyrants. Luckily, resisting tyranny does not require violence or aggression.
We are providing opportunities and options so that people don’t have to seek services that the proceeds from are going towards the government and people who also drain their resources to the government; granting them lesser autonomy and the perpetuation of the under-supplied agorist market.
The moral philosophy of voluntaryism is not required to posit a working solution for how the world would look without a government as that will be created organically by those involved. Still, there are many resources on times past and present where anarchy has existed or exists.
It doesn’t matter where you are or how you live...
You can take action to become more Agorist without compromising your ideals and goals.
If you have a job, any job, you can do it for the network.
If you have a dream, you can dream it better without the current restrictions.
You don’t need money to make something survive. You need an idea.
Any action can be a good expenditure of time, but the person acting has to be self-aware of the action’s context in the larger community. Most actions can be done in a way that leads toward the freedom we all seek.
In order to achieve anarchy, enough individuals must choose a lifestyle that makes freedom a more comfortable and easy choice for others while avoiding choices that perpetuate self-enslavement by making it easier or more comfortable for people to continue making lifestyle and purchasing decisions that perpetuate the continued existence of the State. No business built, family established, or garden tended will make the world more free if those things are not also done with the intention of making the choice of freedom for others more appealing than the “statist-quo”.
The world today is not designed to make your path to freedom from government accessible, but rather to make the choice to surrender your freedom as easy and comfortable as possible. It is filled with institutions and ideologies designed to make freedom seem impossible in this lifetime and to make your time and wealth exploitable by people who thrive on your continued lack of freedom and lack of hope for such. Thinking that it's impossible to achieve freedom. Our job as freedom-bringers is to make the agorist path the path of least resistance for others. That is, freedom-bringers must create a world where freedom from taxation and regulation is as accessible as possible to others.
Each individual can design their life to live with intention toward the maximization of freedom in this lifetime. This website aims to explore and facilitate various ways of life that will bring us as close as possible to anarchy in this lifetime.
We need to imagine a feasible transition from the state we are in now to a new state. Not having this vision is a huge reason why people become inactive or disillusioned within their current communities.
People fall victim to the mentality that certain things aren’t ‘realistic’ or practical and that certain outcomes are virtually impossible in our lifetimes. The only time change is not possible is when enough anarchists continue to believe it is not possible and choose to do nothing.
The high-level overview of our plan goes like this: