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Title: Anarchozionism Author: Samuel Edward Konkin III Date: January 18, 1975 Language: en Topics: libertarianism Source: https://www.sek3.net/anarchozionism.html Notes: Southern Libertarian Review Volume 1 Number 7 / January, 1975 Pages 1, 7
So now it’s Abaco.
From the earliest days of Ayn Rand’s influence over the Libertarian
Movement, frustrated activists have given up on their efforts to reform
or revolt against the American State to seek the promised Gulch.
In the early 1960’s, a group composed primarily of engineers and
technologists worked on a plan to construct an island nation on a
shallow land base of the North Sea. Preform agreed on a tiny, nominal
government, a free port status which would thrive on free trade between
Britain, Norway, and Denmark. Individuals who had been into education
and political action (the LIBERAL INNOVATOR, leafletting the Cow Palace
GOP convention) gave up and published PREFORM-INFORM backing the
escapees.
Then the British seized the pirate radio stations operating outside
their territorial waters. Oil was discovered in the North Sea, and
Britain, Denmark, and Norway promptly carved up the sea bed. The Preform
crowd either Browned out or went into escapist trips such as becoming
nomads, troglodytes, or wilderness dwellers. They sought
“invulnerability to coercion”—or vonu—and PREFORM-INFORM became
Vonulife. Recently it sputtered to a halt, and the paranoia freaks
drifted back to civilization.
Then came Operation Atlantis. Again the anarchist ocean bed was the
site, and a platform-island was to be constructed in the Caribbean. A
group gathered in Saguerties, N.Y., took over a motel, and built a boat.
Again they published a newsletter, and started a commodities operation
(real goods bank) called ATCOPS which took silver deposits. They even
began their own money system, the Deca (10 grams of silver).
The boat sank, and prospective sites were nationalized, but they still
are plugging away in Saguerties.
Then came Michael Oliver and his New Country project, which eventually
decided on a Pacific coral reef named Minerva. Perhaps the goddess of
wisdom drove the men involved mad for their hubris. As soon as concrete
plans were formed, Oliver split with the rest. A hardy individualist who
actually went to the reef to photograph it and lay claim by homesteading
was burned by organizers when he returned, and the ship that arrived in
N.Y. to carry a load of anarcho-immigrants never sailed. It just sat in
dock and leaked. The comical King of Tonga then laid claim to Minerva
and was supported by the less funny states of Fiji and Indonesia.
Now it appears that the Bahamian secessionists of Abaco are interested
in American backing and are even willing to listen politely to John
Hospers. But their aims are to set up a state of their own. The Bahamian
state has deported Hospers as a dangerous Subversive and seem ready to
act to keep their citizenry enshackled.
The villain in all these plays has been the State—always ready to move
against the opening of a free society anywhere. But sometimes, dear
Brutus, we must not look to the stars but to ourselves. Why hasn’t the
State’s intervention been assumed from the beginning? After all, these
were libertarians leading and organizing these plans. Was it not the
very frustration with the State’s omnipresence that lead them to
desperate measures? Why should they believe that the very institution
willing to follow them home, into their pockets and bedrooms, would
suddenly go “hands-off” because they crossed some imaginary line on a
globe?
Ayn Rand’s shrugging Atlases at least faced a crumbling state, one which
was becoming too weak and incompetent to find and destroy their
embryonic free society. It is self-consistently obvious that if those
who make the statist society work abandon it and devote their efforts to
a free society, the State will fall and the free area will function.
But without these people and conditions? A is A, but suppose you don’t
have A? Ayn herself has never backed a single new country group, to her
credit. My conclusion is that if the promised land seekers continue to
pursue their Zion despite a dismal record in practice due to
demonstrated errors in theory, they don’t need Rand, Rothbard, or, for
that matter, Konkin or Royce. Szasz and Branden may offer more concrete
assistance.
As for me, anarchy begins at home.